PSYC 466 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Meta-Analysis, Social Desirability Bias
6 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
The scientific study of relationships is a recent endeavour that has come of age only in the last 35 years. The field has now grown to include the study of all types of relationships in their natural settings around the world developing a question. Research questions come from a number of sources, including personal experience, recognition of social problems, the results of prior research, and theoretical predictions. The questions usually seek either to describe events or to delineate causal connections among variables obtaining participants. Convenience samples are composed of participants who are easily available. Representative samples are more costly, but they better reflection the population of interest. Both types can suffer from volunteer bias choosing a design. A correlation describes the strength and direction of an association between two variables. Correlations are inherently ambiguous because events can be related for a variety of reasons. Experiments control and manipulate situations to delineate cause and effect.
