methods 2

Question 1

what is validity?

Answer 1

how true or legitimate something is as an explanation of behavior

Question 2

what does a lack of control lead to?

Answer 2

a lack of validity

Question 3

what are the different threats to validity?

Answer 3

• individual differences/pp variables
• lack of control over environment (situational)
• participant factors
• investigator effects

Question 4

how do individual differences/pp variables affect validity?

Answer 4

• participants in different conditions differ in behavior, personality, etc.

Question 5

how do you avoid individual differences/pp variables affecting validity?

Answer 5

• randomization

- matching procedure

Question 6

what is a situational variable?

Answer 6

a variable that is an aspect of the environment that might have an effect on the DV

Question 7

what is standardization?

Answer 7

making everything the same between and within conditions

Question 8

what are the different ways in which participant factors can affect validity?

Answer 8

not behaving naturally, trying…:

• harder (the hawthorne effect)
• to look good (social desirability)
• to spoil the research (‘screw you’ effect)

Question 9

how can investigator effects affect validity during procedure, data collection and analysis?

Answer 9

• appearance
• behavior
• bias

Question 10

how do you control participant factors?

Answer 10

• use naive participants unaware of the study
• omission/deception of the aim
• blind procedure

Question 11

how do you control investigator factors?

Answer 11

• blind procedure: researcher unaware of hypothesis
• machine-run experiments
• training for standardization between researchers
• use the same researcher