GCSE Psychology: Research Methods

Opportunity sampling

A fast but not very representative method of recruiting participants

Bar chart

A graph with separate bars. usually there is one bar for each condition in an experiment.

Laboratory Experiment

A highly controlled method which measures participants' performance in two or more conditions.

Right to withdraw

A participant's right to leave a study at any time

Case Study

A research method studying an individual or a small group and gathering in-depth and detailed information using various methods

Aim

A statement of what the study is being carried out to find.

Null hypothesis

A statement that the IV will have no effect on the DV. This is rejected if there is support for the alternate hypothesis.

Hypothesis

A testable statement (of the difference between the conditions in an experiment). This is rejected if not enough evidence is found and the null is accepted.

Range

A way to show how spread out a set of results is by looking and the biggest and smallest scores.

Ethical guidelines

Advice to help psychologists solve ethical issues.

Mean

An average that is calculated by adding up the scores in a set and dividing by the number of scores

Median

An average that is the middle number in a set of scores when they are put in order from smallest to largest.

Mode

An average that is the most common score in a set.

Privacy

An ethical guideline for studies that involve people as participants, which ensure that their names must not be recorded and they must not be identifiable.

Confidentiality

An ethical guideline for studies that involve people as participants, which ensures that information gained must not be shared with others without permission.

Informed consent

An individual's right to know what will happen in an experiment, and its aims, before agreeing to participate.

unstructured interview

An interview in which the question-answer sequence is spontaneous, open-ended, and flexible.

Systematic sampling

Asking every Nth person on a list of your target population to take part. Requires a list of all target population

Quantitative data

Data involving numbers and statistics, such as percentages.

Qualitative data

Data involving stories or attitudes, data is descriptive language rather than statistics

Y axis

Dependent variable goes here on a graph of your results

Independent groups design

Different participants are used in each condition in an experiment

Repeated measures design

Each participant takes part in every condition under test.

Scatter graph

Graphs which show how two sets of data are related to each other.

X axis

Independent variable goes here on a graph of your results

Normal distribution curve

Most people fall in the centre, smaller numbers of people towards the edge, creating a bell shape graph

Ethical issues

Potential psychological or physical risks for people in experiments.

Valid

Refers to findings of studies and means that they are about real-life situations, real-life behaviour or feelings that are real.

Generalisable

Refers to findings of studies and whether they can be true of other people (who were not studied in the experiment)

Reliability

Refers to whether findings from a study would be found again if the study was repeated. A study is reliable if the findings are replicated in a different method..

Stratified sampling

Taking a selection of people from important layers of your population to get a very representative sample.

Independent variable

The factor which is changed by the researcher in an experiment to make two or more conditions.

Dependent variable

The factor which is measured in an experiment.

Experimental design

The way that participants are used in different conditions in an experiment. They may do all conditions or different participants may do each condition.

Random sampling

Time consuming but representative sample of all participants in the target population. Very difficult to achieve (informed consent from random ppts)

Scatter graph

Two variables on x and y axes and points plotted to find a correlation. Used with ordinal/interval data (numbers on a scale, e.g score on a test)

Controls

Ways to keep variables constant in all conditions of an experiment.

Descriptive statistics

Ways to summarise results from a study. This could be a measure of central tendency or spread of data.

Subjective

Where the researcher's view is somehow affecting the information that is gathered

Objective

Where the researcher's views do not affect the information that is gathered.

spread of data distribution

a measure of the amount of variability, or how "spread out" a set of data is.

central tendency

a measure that represents the typical response or the behavior of a group as a whole. mean, median, mode

negative correlation

a relationship between two variables in which one variable increases when the other decreases

structured interview

a research procedure in which all participants are asked to answer the same questions in the same order

questionnaire data

from people's responses (on paper, online, by post or verbally filled in) about attitudes, awareness, intentions, behaviors.

positive correlation

two variables change in the same direction, both becoming either larger or smaller