Chapter 5 Flashcards
(22 cards)
Individual differences and “third variables”
- Threat to internal validity
- pseudo-experiment
- control group
Selection bias
Sampling people from unrepresentative sample
Nonresponse bias
The respondents themselves are the source of bias by not responding
WEIRD sample
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic
History
Changes that occur more or less across the board in a very large group of people
Maturation
Refers to the specific development or experiential changes that occur in a particular person
Regression toward the mean
Tendency for people who receive extreme scores to score closer to the mean when given the assessment at another time
Performance score
What’s observed; contains error and true score
Testing Effects
Tendency for most people to perform better in a test the second time they take the test
Experimental mortality (attrition)
Failure of some research participants to complete an investigation
Homogeneous attrition
- both sides lose equal amounts of people
- threats external validity
Heterogeneous attrition
- one side loses more that the other
- threatens internal validity
How handle experimental mortality (attrition)
- communicate importance of study
- warn people about study
- give rewards
Participant reaction bias
Bias that occurs when research participants realize they are being assessed and behave in ways in which they normally wouldn’t behave
Three forms of participant reaction bias
1) Participant expectancies
2) Participant reactance
3) Evaluation apprehension
Experimenter bias
Bias that occurs in research when the investigator’s expectations about participants lead to false support for these expectations
How to fix experimenter bias?
Double-blind procedure
Confounds
- Factors that could explain the results but aren’t directly measured or addressed by the study
- threat internal validity
How to eliminate confounds
- be careful (think through design of study)
- replicate
- measure and control
Artifact
Variable that is held constant in a study but which influences the relation between the IV and DV
Worry about artifacts when…
- setting or samples vary when researchers aim to generalize
- have some kind of theoretical connection to particular research finding
Threats to Validity
- people are different
- people change
- process of studying people changes people
