100% satisfaction guarantee Immediately available after payment Both online and in PDF No strings attached
logo-home
Previously searched by you
Previously searched by you
logo
Summary: Research Methods / Methodology 1 - Psychology Bachelor - year 1, period 1 - English CA$6.01   Add to cart
Quickly navigate to
Preview
  2.  
  3. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  4.  
  5. Methodologie 1 (P_BMETHOD_1)

Summary

Summary: Research Methods / Methodology 1 - Psychology Bachelor - year 1, period 1 - English
 52 views  0 purchase
  • Course
  • Methodologie 1 (P_BMETHOD_1)
  • Institution
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Book
  • Research Methods in Psychology

Includes all pages of the Research Methods book that were given as exam material. My final grade for this course was an 8.0 and I studied just this summary and attended most lectures.

Preview 5 out of 29  pages

Document information

  • No
  • All parts of the book that were instructed to be part of the final exam material.
  • August 21, 2020
  • 29
  • 2019/2020
  • Summary

Subjects

  • research methods
  • research methods 1
  • methodology 1
  • methodology
  • methodologie
  • psychology
  • bachelor psychology
  • first year
  • year 1
  • psychologie
  • vrije universiteit amsterdam
  • vu

Connected book

book image

Book Title:

Author(s):

  • Edition:
  • ISBN:
  • Edition:

More summaries for

  • BETH MORLING RESEARCH METHODS IN PSYCHOLOGY Third Edition
  • Summary Research Methods in Psychology/ Inleiding Methodenleer (424502-B-5) - Achieved an 8.5 myself!
  • Glossary for Introduction to Methodology
All for this textbook (23)

Written for

  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Psychologie
  • Methodologie 1 (P_BMETHOD_1)
All documents for this subject (36)

Seller

avatar-seller
nmcsd

Reviews received

Content preview

Research Methods in Psychology
Chapter 1-14
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Semester 1, Period 1
Chapter 1
Research producers and consumers: share commitment to empiricism
Producers:
 Research scientists
 Professors
Consumers:
 Therapists
 Teachers
 Entrepreneurs
 Counselors
 Police officers
Evidence-based treatments: therapies that are supported by research

Empiricism: involves using evidence from the senses or from other instruments that
assist the senses as the basis for conclusions
 Aim is to be systematic, rigorous and to make work independently verifiable

Theory: set of statements that describes general principles about how variables
relate to one another
Hypothesis or prediction: the specific outcome the researcher expects to observe in
a study if the theory is accurate
 Most researchers test theories with a series of empirical studies, each
designed to test an individual hypothesis
Data: set of observations

The best theories are:
 Supported by data from research studies
 Multiple studies, variety of methods to address different aspects of
theories
 Falsifiable: theory must lead to hypotheses that, when tested, could actually
fail support it
 Parsimonious: when theories explain data equally well, scientists opt for the
simpler explanation

Theories don’t prove anything
 Scientists evaluate theories based on the weight of the evidence, for and
against

Applied research: done with a practical problem in mind; conducted in a particular
real-world context
Basic research: aims to enhance the general body of knowledge
 Generated knowledge may be applied to real-world issues later on
Translational research: use of lessons from basic research to develop and test
applications to health care, psychotherapy or other forms of treatment and
intervention



1

,Basic research > Translational research > Applied research

Research publication
 Through scientific journals
 Articles are peer-reviewed
 Read primarily by other scientists and psychology students

Journalism: contrasts journals in that it includes the kinds of news and commentary
that is read or heard on television, magazines, newspapers and the internet
 Not written by scientists, meant for general public, special education is not
required to understand their content

Journalists publishing psychological research may have benefits
 Better understanding of psychologists’ work
 Better understanding of self and environment > change of habits
 However, story should be important and reported accurately


Chapter 2
Experience has no comparison group
 Comparison group: enables us to compare what would happen both with and
without the thing we are interested in
 Basing conclusions on personal experience is problematic because
daily life usually doesn’t include comparison experiences
 Experience is confounded – even if a change occurs, there is no
certainty in what caused it
 In contrast: basing conclusions on systematic data collection provides
a comparison group

Confounds: several possible explanations for an outcome in real-world situations
 Occurs when you think one thing caused an outcome but in fact other things
changed too
 Careful controls are used in a research setting to make sure only one
factor at a time is changed

Confederate: an actor playing a specific role for an experimenter

Behavioral research is probabilistic; its findings are not expected to explain all cases
of all time, but rather a certain proportion

Examples of biased reasoning:
 Being swayed by a good story (catharsis, Scared Straight)
 Being persuaded by what comes easily to mind
 Availability heuristic: states that things that pop up easily in our mind
tend to guide our thinking, might lead us to wrongly estimate the
number of something or how often something happens
 Failing to think about what we cannot see: when testing relationships, we
often fail to look for absences
 Present/present bias: our failure to consider appropriate comparison
groups – Dr. Rush bloodletting study

2

,  Instances where treatment was absent, but outcome was still present
are overlooked
 The availability heuristic plays a role in the present/present bias
because instances in the present/present cell of a comparison stand
out
 Present/present bias adds tendency to ignore absent cells, which
are essential for testing relationships
 To avoid this bias, ask: “Compared to what?”
 Focusing on the evidence we like best
 Confirmation bias: tendency to look only at information that agrees
with what we already believe
 Biased about being biased
 Bias blind spot: the belief that we are unlikely to be susceptible to
biases previously described
 Makes us trust out faulty reasoning even more
 Can make it difficult for us to initiate the scientific theory-data
cycle

To be an empiricist:
 Base believes on systematic information from the senses
 Strive to interpret the data you collect in an objective way; guard against
common biases

Before taking advice from authorities:
 Ask about the source of their ideas
 Objective and systematic comparison of conditions?
 Reference to research evidence? > if yes, attention worthy

Scientific sources
 Journal articles
 Empirical journal articles: report results of an empirical research study
 Review journal articles: provide a summary of all the published studies
that have been done in one research area
 Meta-analysis may be used: quantitative technique that
combines result of many studies and gives a number that
summarizes magnitude > effect size of a relationship
o Valued technique; doesn’t allow cherry-picking and
weighs each study proportionately
 Chapters in edited books
 Collection of chapters on a common topic; each written by a different
contributor
 Not the first time a study is reported, rather a summary of research
and explanation of theory behind it
 Good way to find a summary of a specific person’s work
 Not as rigorously peer-reviewed as scientific sources
 Psychologists and psychology students audience
 Full-length books
 Common in other disciplines but not so much in psychology

Finding scientific sources

3

,  PsycINFO
 Google Scholar

Components of an empirical journal article:
 Abstract
 Summary of the article describing hypotheses, method and major
results
 Introduction
 Explains topic of study, background for research and the study’s
specific research questions/goals/hypotheses
 Method
 Participants, materials, procedure and apparatus
 Results
 Tables and figures summarizing key results
 Qualitative and qualitative data
 Discussion
 Summarizes and discusses the study’s importance, gives alternative
explanations for data and raises new questions
 References

Reading with purpose
1. What is the argument?
 Abstract, introduction, first paragraph of discussion
2. What is the evidence to support the argument?
 Method and results

Wikis as a research source
 Not comprehensive in their coverage
 No comprehensive reference list
 Details might be incorrect until they are fixed
 Vandalism is a potential problem


Chapter 3
Variable: something that varies, and which must at least have two levels/values
Constant: something that could potentially vary but has only one level in the study
in question
Measured variable: one whose levels are simply observed and recorded
Manipulated variable: variable a researcher controls, usually by assigning study
participants to different levels of that variable
 Some variables can be either measured or manipulated – hair color

Conceptual variables/constructs: abstract concepts defined at the theoretical level
by conceptual definitions
Operational variables/operationalizations: operational definitions of variables
created by testing hypotheses with empirical research

Claim: argument someone is trying to make
 Frequency claims: describe a particular rate or degree of a single variable
 Variables are always measured, not manipulated

4

,  Association claims: argue that one level of a variable is likely to be associated
with a particular level of another variable
 Variables that are associated are said to correlate or to be related
 When one variable changes, the other tends to change
 Correlational study: study in which variables are measured ant the
relationship between them is tested
 Positive association/correlation: in which high goes with high,
and low goes with low > scatterplot can be used to represent an
association
 Negative association/correlation: high goes with low, and low
goes with high
 Zero association/correlation
 Causal claims: argue that one of the variables is responsible for changing the
other
 Have two variables
 Start with a positive or negative association
 Causal verbs tend to be more active and forceful, suggesting one
variable comes first in time and then acts on the other
 Causal claims that contain tentative language – could, may, seem,
suggest, sometimes, potentially – is still considered a causal claim
 It must be established that two variables are correlated
 It must be established that the causal variable came first, and
the outcome variable came later
 It must be established that no other explanations exist for the
relationship

Validity: refers to the appropriateness of a conclusion or decision

Interrogating frequency claims > focus on construct, external, statistical validity
Construct validity: refers to how well a conceptual variable is operationalized
 Asks how well a study measured or manipulated – operationalized – a
variable
 To ensure construct validity, it must be established that each variable has
been measured reliably, and that different levels accurately correspond to
true differences
External validity/generalizability: concerns how participants were chosen and how
well they represent the intended population
 Concerns how well the results of a study generalize to, or represent, people
or contexts beside those in the original study
Statistical validity: the extent to which a study’s statistical conclusions are accurate
and reasonable
 Percentages reported in frequency claims are usually accompanied by a
margin of error estimate

Interrogating association claims > focus on construct, external, statistical validity
Construct validity: assess the construct validity of each variable
External validity: ask whether the claim can be generalized to other populations,
contexts, times, or places
Statistical validity: the extent to which the statistical conclusions are accurate and
reasonable

5

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying these notes from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller nmcsd. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy these notes for CA$6.01. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

67474 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now

Start selling
CA$6.01
  • (0)
  Add to cart