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Psychology 121 Chapter 3 - Psychological science and research
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This document includes all lecture notes for chapter 3. Chapter three is about research methods and why those methods are used.
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Chapter 3: psychological science & researchResearch:
• Main purpose of this research is to help us understand people and to improve the quality of human
lives.
• There are two overall categories of research:
1. Basic research: answers fundamental questions about behaviour
2. Applied research: investigates issues that have implications for everyday life and provides solutions
to everyday problems.
a. Given a problem and have to figure out problem
Research design
• Descriptive: research designed to provide a snapshot of the current state of affairs.
o Just observe
o No interventions
• Correlational: research designed to discover relationships among variables and to allow the prediction
of future events from present knowledge
o Discover relationships / two variables
o Water + anxiety
• Experimental: research conducted with a scientific approach where a asset of variables are
manipulated while the other set of variables are being measured
o Design we are the most familiar with
o When someone gets something, and the other group doesn’t
Section 1 – psychologists use the Scientific Method to Guide Their Research
Scientific Method
• Is the set of assumptions, rules, and procedures scientists use to conduct research
• Empirical: based on systematic collection and analysis of data
• Objective: free from the personal bias or emotions of the scientists
• Replicable: to repeat, add to, or modify previous research findings.
• It is used to create
o Laws
o Theories
o Hypotheses
Laws
• Principles that are so general as to apply to all situations in a given domain of inquiry (e.g. law of
gravity)
• They are themselves rarely directly subjected to scientific test
Theories
• An integrated set of principles that explains and predicts many, but not all, observable relationships
within a given domain of inquiry
o Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Good theories have four important characteristics:
o General: they can be applied to many different outcomes
o Parsimonious: they provide the simplest possible explanation
o Falsifiable: predictions can be made and measured to be correct or incorrect
• No single theory is able to account for all behaviour in all cases
• Theories are each limited in that they make accurate predictions in some situations or for some people
but not in other situations or for other people
• There is a constant exchange between theory and data:
o Existing theories are modified on the basis of collected data,
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