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Exam Summary for Research Workshop: Experiment
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Detailed summary for exam of Research Workshop: Experiment course for Communication Science at UvA.
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Experiment Exam NotesWeek 1
Chapter 1
Scientific method → basic, standard practice in the world of science
- Gather + interpret information
Resarch methodology helps to:
1) Conduct a study
2) Reading and evaluating other people’s studies
3) Understand brief descriptions of studies
- Abbrivated descriptions - evidence supporting conclusion
- Style to describe someone elses study
- Determined by the principles of research methodology → Lingo ?
4) Gathering and evaluating information in real life
- Find and evaluate original source of info
- Can identify flaws in method
- Can tease apart truth on your own (not dependent on quoted experts)
- Make educated decisions about claims in everyday life
Methods of acquiring knowledge → ways in which a person can know things or discover answers to
questions.
5 non-scientific approaches:
1) Method of Tenacity → holding on to ideas and beliefs simply because they have been accepteed
as facts for a long time
- In the method of tenacity, information is accepted as true because it has always been
believed or because superstition supports it.
- Belief presence → continue believing something we have always believed (out of habit)
- In advertisements → repreating the message over and over
- Persistance of Superstitions → represents beliefs reacted to as facts; BUT problem →
information that is acquired might not be accurate + there is no method of correcting
erroneous ideas → e belief that is accepted sloley on the basis of tenacity is very difficult
to change
2) Method of Intuition → information is accepted as true because it feels right
- In the method of intuition, information is accepted on the basis of a hunch or “gut
feeling.”
- Person relies on hunches and instinct to answer questions (we have a gut feeling)
- Often used when we have no information at all
1
, - Used when we make personal choices between equally attractive alternatives (what I feel
like doing)
- Many ethical decisions or moral questions are resolved in this way
- Some part proboably based on subtle cues that we pick up from the people around us
- PROBLEM → it has no mechanism for separating accurate from inaccurate knowledge
3) Method of Authority → person finds answers by seeking out an authority on the subject
- Consulting an expert, going to library …
- In the method of authority, a person relies on information or answers from an expert in
the subject area.
- Relying on assumed expertise of another person
- Often quick and easy way to obtain answers
- Pitfalls:
a) It does not always provide accurate information → authorities can be biased
b) Answers obtained from an expert could represent subjective, personal opinion
rather than true expert knowledge
c) We assume by virtue of the person’s status as an authority that expertise can be
generalized to include the questions we are asking
d) People often accept an expert’s statement without question → people do not
check the accuracy of their sources or even consider looking for a second opinion
thus sometimes false information is taken as truth
e) People sometimes accept the word of an authority beacuse they have complete
trust in authority figure → here, the method of authority is called Method of Faith
because people accept on faith any info that is given
- The method of faith is a variant of the method of authority in which
people have unquestioning trust in the authority figure and, therefore,
accept information from the authority without doubt or challenge.
f) Not all experts are experts → a lot of “supposed” experts that lack creditentials
Ways to increase confidence in information obtained by the Method of Authority:
1. Evaluate the source of info
2. Evaluate info itself
4) The Rational Method/Rationalism → seeking answers by logical reasoning; we begin with a set
of facts or assumptions ans use logic to reach a conclusion
- The rational method, or rationalism, seeks answers by the use of logical reasoning.
- In logical reasoning, premise statements describe facts or assumptions
that are presumed to be true.
- An argument is a set of premise statements that are logically combined to yield a conclusion.
- Example:
All 3-year-old children are afraid of the dark.
Amy is a 3-year-old girl.
Therefore, Amy is afraid of the dark.
- The first two sentances are premise statements → facts or assumptions that are
known to be true
2
, - The final sentence is a logical conclusion based on premises
- If the premise statements are true and the logic is sound → conclusion is correct
(rules of logic)
- Rational method begins after the premise statements have been presented
Limitations:
1. Even if the logic is sound there is still chance that the conclusion might not be
true → if any basic assumption or premise is incorrect then we cannot have any
confidence in the truth of the logical conclusion
2. A logical conclusion is only valid for the specific situation described by the
premise statements, if the premise statements are incomplete or do not totally
represent the real-world situation than the conclusion might not be accurate
3. People are not particularly good at logical reasoning → people have difficulty
judging the validity of a logical argument
- Logic is a way of establishing truth in the absence of evidence
5) The Empirical Method/Empiricism → answer questions by direct observation or personal
experience
- The empirical method, or empiricism, uses observation or direct sensory experience to
obtain knowledge
- A viewpint that states that all knowledge is acquired through the senses
Limitations:
1. We cannot necessarily believe everything we see
2. Preceptions can be drastically altered by prior knowledge, expectations, feeling and beliefs →
two observers can witness the same event but see two different things
The Horizontal-Vertical Illusion → To most people, the vertical line appears to be longer, even though
both lines are exactly the same length.
Different people can use different methods to answer the same question and can arrive at different, or
sometimes the same, answers.
The scientific method → an approach to acquiring knwoledge that involves formulating specific
questions and then systematically finding answers
3
, The steps of Scientific Method:
1. Observe behavior or other phenomena
- Scientific method often starts with casual or informal observations
- People tend to generalize beyond the actual observations
- The process of generalization is an almost automatic human response know as induction
or inductive reasoning → reaching a general conclusion based on a few specific examples
- Induction, or inductive reasoning, involves using a relatively small set of specific
observations as the basis for forming a general statement about a larger set of possible
observations.
2. Form a Tentative answer or explanation (a hypothesis)
- Starts with identifying other factors or variables that are associated with your observation
- Variables are characteristics or conditions that change or have different values for
different individuals. For example, the weather, the economy, and your state of health can
change from day to day
- Then, you must select one of the explanations to be evaluated in a scientific research
study → at this point we have a hypothesis or explanation for our obeservation → A
hypothesis is not a final answer but rather a proposal to be tested and evaluated.
3. Use your hypothesis to generate a testable prediction
- Taking the hypothesis and applying it to a specific observable, real world situation
- Logical process to make a prediction → deduction/deductive reasining - uses a general
statement as the basis for reaching a conclusion about specific examples
- We use hypothesis as a universal premise
- Induction and deduction are complementary processes: Induction uses specific examples
to generate general conclusions or hypotheses, and deduction uses general conclusions to
generate specific predictions
- Either the observations will provide support for the hypothesis or they will refute the hypothesis.
For a prediction to be truly testable, both outcomes must be possible.
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