Chapter 2 Exam Psych

College students asked to write 20 min a day for 3 days -group 1:emotional -control coup: what the day was like group 1 made less trips to health center demonstrating a relationship between mental events and physical health

1. theoretical framework 2. a standardized procedure 3. generalizability 4. objective measurement

Psychologists are interested in determining the causes of mental events and behaviors theory: a systemic way of organizing and explaining observation. ie. framework hypothesis: proposed cause and effect relationships b/w 2 or more variables

Cont: vary along some continium ie body weight, intelligence, depression categorial: can take on fixed values ie gender

All participants should be exposed to as similar procedures as possible. only exception should be the variation that tests the hypothesis (control v. experimental group)

Sampling must be representative or actual resemblence to population as a whole -internal validity: are the methods/procedures of the study sound or are they flawed?; is it in a methodogology sound way -external validity: does the experimental situation reperesent the real world Experimenters dilemma: trade of b/w the 2; they are indirectly related (as you increase internal validity, external validity therby decreases)

Construct: trait or characteristic we wish to measure ie depression, intelligence measure-concrete way to perationalize a concrete concept reliablity-are you measuring in a consistent way test-retest: same test/subj;different time inter-rater- consistency across people alternate forms-multiple forms of a tests ie test A test B (least popular) inerity: different items measuring the same thing (most popular)

Study of 1 person or a small group drawbacks-small sample size limits and researcher bias used when large group of participants isnt available

In depth observation in a natural setting advantage-hgigh generializbility 2 disadvantages- observation can alter behavior and cannot explain conclusion

Asks ? to a large sample to gain information on their attitudes -random research stratified random sample: specifies # of people to be drawn from each population

Sumarizes data to help you understand what it means frequency distribution-where the results are clumped mean-statistical average mode-most commonly used median-50%, middle score range= high-low score standard deviation: almost every study reports, shows how the avg participant deviates from the mean of the samble "bell curve"

Bell curve: true for most naturally occuring phemonom, departures from reality skewness neg skewed-long tail on left more A's than B's pos skewed-long tail on right kurtosis-peakness of distributions

Sole purpose is to determine the relationship bw 2 variables -does NOT tell you causality bivariable distribution: descrives the relationship b/w 2 variables (like a scatter plot)

Provides a numerical summary of the strength and direction of the relationshiop pos-high values mean high neg-low means high *the closer to + or - 1 the stronger the relationship (the sign tells you if it is a pos or neg relationship)

Under estimates the degree of the relationship