CLP-3305 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Epidemiological Method, Longitudinal Study, Scatter Plot
Document Summary
Research is important because it helps us discover new information and revise old theories. It also helps use understand behaviors and thoughts of the patients within the clinical psychology field and those not seeking treatment. Naturalistic observation: hard to generalize, more systematic and planned, observer has less control. Controlled observation: investigator has more control over experiment. Case studies: great source of hypothesis generators and way to understand rare, new, or unusual phenomena, helps disconfirm accepted information, hard to generalize, can"t establish cause and effect relationship. Correlational methods: pearson product-moment correlation coefficient most commonly used to determine relationship degree, use scatterplot to display findings. Correlation does not determine causation because of possibility of 3rd variable: factor analysis- way of examining the interrelationships among a number of variables at the same time. Cross-sectional v. s. longitudinal approaches: cross sectional: evaluates or compares individuals of a different age groups at the same point in time.
