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| a five-step process for empirical investigation of a hypothesis under conditions designed to control biases and subjective judgments |
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| an approach to research that relies on sensory experience and observation as research data |
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| a testable explanation for a set of facts or observations |
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| a statement predicting the outcome of a scientific study; a statement describing the relationship among variables in a study |
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| specify descriptions of concepts involving the conditions of a scientific study; operational definitions are stated in terms of how the concepts are to be measured or what operations are being employed to produce them |
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| a stimulus condition so named because the experimenter changes it independently of all the other carefully controlled experimental conditions |
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| a process by which chance alone determines the order in which the stimulus is presented |
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| pieces of information, especially information gathered by a researcher to be used in testing a hypothesis |
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| the measured outcome of a study; the responses of the subjects in a study |
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| in research this refers to doing a study over to see whether the same results are obtained; as a control for bias, replication is often done by someone other than the researcher who performed the original study |
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| components of the research process |
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| developing a research question, surveying the literature, hypothesis, independent variable, dependent variable, extraneous variables, controls, sampling/subjects, procedure, results/statistics, discussion |
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| a kind of research in which the researcher controls all the conditions and directly manipulates the conditions, including the independent variable |
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| variables that have an unwanted influence on the outcome of an experiment |
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| constraints that the experimenter places on the experiment to ensure that each subject has the exact same conditions |
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| each subject of the sample has an equal likelihood of being chosen for the experimental group of an experiment |
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| seven non-experimental methodologies |
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| ex-post facto design, correlation study, survey, naturalistic observation, longitudinal study, cross-sectional study, cohort-sequential study |
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| research in which we choose subjects based on a pre-existing condition |
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| a quasi-experimental method in which questions are asked to subjects; when designing a survey, the researcher has to be careful that the questions are not skewed or based toward a particular answer |
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| a research method in which subjects are observed in their natural environment |
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| a type of study in which one group of subjects is followed and observed for an extended period of time |
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| a study in which a representative cross section of the population is tested or surveyed at one specific time |
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| a research method in which a cross section of the population is chosen and then each cohort is followed for a short period of time |
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| a type of research that is mainly statistical in nature; correlation studies determine the relationship (or correlation) between two variables |
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| the researcher allowing personal beliefs to affect the outcome of a study |
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| the researcher allowing his or her expectations to affect the outcome of a study |
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| an experimental procedure in which both researchers and participants are uninformed about the nature of the independent variable being administered |
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| Institutional Review Board (IRB) |
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| a committee at each institution where research is conducted to review every experiment for ethics and methodology |
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| Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) |
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| a committee at each institution where research is conducted to review every experiment, involving animals, for ethics and methodology |
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| a summary chart, showing how frequently each of the various scores in a set of data occurs |
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| a bar graph depicting a frequency distribution; the heigh of the bars indicates the frequency of a group of scores |
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| statistical procedures used to describe characteristics and responses of groups of subjects |
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| measure of central tendency |
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| help us locate the center of a set of measurements |
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| to describe the "spread-outness" of scores around some measures of central tendency |
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| the measure of central tendency most often used to describe a set of data-calculated by adding all the scores and dividing by the number of scores |
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| a measure of central tendency for a distribution, represented by the score that occurs more often than any other |
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| a measure of central tendency for a distribution, represented by the score that separates the upper half of the scores in a distribution from the lower half |
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| the simplest measure of variablility, represented by the difference between the highest and the lowest values in a frequency distribution |
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| a measure of variablility that indicates the average difference between the scores and their mean |
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| a bell-shaped curve, describing the spread of a characteristic throughout a population |
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| a relationship between variables, in which changes in one variable are reflected in changes in the other variable- as in the correlation between a child's age and height |
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| a number between -1 and +1 expressing the degree of relationship between two variables |
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| statistical techniques (based on probibility theory) used to assess whether the results of a study are reliable or whether they might be simply the result of chance; inferential statistics are often used to determine whether two or mroe groups are essentially the same or different |
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| a sample obtained in such a way that it reflects the distribution of important variables in the larger population in which the researchers are interested- variables such as age, income level, ethnicity, and geographic distribution |
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| psychologists accept a difference between the groups as "real", or significant, when the probability that it might be due to an atypical sample drawn by chance is less than 5 in 100 |
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