Research Methods Flashcards
Descriptive Statistics
Describe a data set and what’s going on , but don’t let you say anything about the people who aren’t included in your data set.
Inferential Statistics
Is the difference we observed between the two groups dependable, or did we observe it by chance? Is there really a difference in the underlying population?
Null hypothesis
There is no difference between these two groups
P-value
The probability of obtaining a difference as big as the one observed when there actually is no difference.
Basic Statistical Tests that Developmental Psychopathologists Use?
1) Differences between groups: T-Tests (two groups), ANOVA (more than two groups).
2) Are continuous variables related to each other? Are greater number of conduct symptoms associated with poorer language skills? Relationships between variables, not looking at group differences.
Risk & Protective Factors
Risk factors: Increase the chance of a negative outcome. Low SES functions as a risk factor for childhood maltreatment, depression, anxiety.
Protective factors: Decrease the chance of a negative outcome. Family social support is protective against the onset of depression, secure attachment is protective against the risk of later anxiety.
Different types of protective factors
- Regular protective
- Protective-stabilizing: When an attribute is present, no matter how high the risk is, you still experience that positive outcome equally.
- Protective-enhancing: Uncommon. Well-being goes up as people’s exposure to something bad increases, as it gets tough you start doing better and better.
- Protective-reactive: As stress goes up, your well-being goes down, but it doesn’t go down quite as steeply as in regular protective factor. The factor prevents harmful outcomes when risk is low, but ask risk gets higher the effects of the protective factor begin to break down.
Main effect
Association between independent variable and dependent variable. Conduct disorder and educational attainment. Family income and education attainment.
Interaction/Moderation
The association between one IV and the DV varies as a function of the other variable. Social support impacting the relationship between stress and depression.
Mediator Variables
Impact the process, mechanism, or means through which a variable produces a particular outcome. Accounts for some (partial mediation) or all (full mediation) of the apparent relationship between two variables. Direct effect:
Unstructured interviews
Clinician asks questions and arrives at diagnosis. Common and easy. Challenges: Less comprehensive. Biases. Confirmatory bias: Come in with pre-conceived notion of what’s goning on, and that might push me to ask questions in certain direction. Availability heuristic: Base decisions on examples that come to mind easily. Combine information in idiosyncratic ways.
Semi-Structured and Structured Interview
Interviewer has a set of questions that are presented to the respondent.
Semi-structured: Interviewed has a lot of latitude in asking the questions. Clinical judgment involved in determining when a symptom is present.
Structured: Questions are fixed and interviewed has very little flexibility. Can be administered by computer.
Unstructured vs Semi-Structured and Structured Interview
Data suggests that structured and semi-structured are more reliable and give better data. Also do a better job at getting to a numerical score about how severe or present a disorder is.
Disadvantage of Structured & Semi-Structured Interviews
Structured and semi-strutted interviews are the gold standard instruments in psychopathology research. Weaknesses might come in terms of their feasibility. Often longer, and might involve a certain amount of required training.
K-SADS
Has an initial self-report screener, and each question asks about a different domain of psychopathology. Based on that screening info, it might tell me to follow up in certain areas. Good coverage across many sorts of disorders. Can ‘skip out’ if participants aren’t endorsing symptoms.
Rating Scales
People knowledgeable about the child answer questions about behaviours and feelings. Often used to measure psychopathology continuously. Can be used to make a categorial decision. Shower than structured and semi-structured interviews, and no interviewer required. Assumption has been that they are less good than interviews. Trade-off between higher validity/reliability of interviews than feasibility of checklists.
Observation
Actually trying to go into a naturalistic setting as a clinician and see the behaviour of interest in person. Naturalistic observation: Occur in child’s natural environment (classroom, home). Structured observation: Laboratory or clinic -based.
Challenges associated with observational approaches
Feasibility. External validity: extent to which findings will generalize. May be difficult to see behaviours of interest: Low-base rate (e.g. physics aggression), Covert (e.g. relational aggression), researchers have developed very creative solutions to this.
A ‘typical’ thorough ADHD assessment
IQ testing + Academic achievement testing (reading, writing, math) + ADHD rating scales from teachers, parents, and self-report (if old enough) + Semi-structured clinical interview (e.g., K-SADS with parent and child (if old enough) = Determination of whether or not child meets criteria for ADHD.
A ‘typical’ thorough ADHD assessment: Why do all this just to diagnose ADHD?
Rule out learning disabilities and intellectual development disorders as root cause of inattention + hyperactivity in school.
Use of Informants in Assessment
Assessments of kids often uses other reports (self-report, parents, teachers). They all have different windows into kids’ experience an in different contexts. Rating scales and interviews rely on someone’s report of symptoms.
Disagreement among informations: Different perspectives
Rater-specific factors that lead to systematic differences in reporting: some evidence for bias in reports of some informants.
Legitimate differences in the meaning of behaviours across settings: Parents an teachers interact with children in different contexts, and these contexts may change interpretation of behaviour.
Informant discrepancies may tell us something real about children’s adaption in various settings.
Disagreement among informations: Situation specificity of children’s behaviour
Children’s behaviour varies markedly across different situations and settings. Different demands. Inter-rater differences may be capturing legitimate differences in children’s behaviour across settings. Parents and teachers may be seeing different behaviours.
How are data from multiple informants used to make a diagnosis?
“Or” Rule: I give a rating scale to parent and a teacher and ask if different symptoms are present, I count it as present if parent OR teacher says it is.
“And” Rule: Symptom is present only if all informants agree.
These rues can potentially result in different diagnostic decisions.
