Research Methods Flashcards
Give some weaknesses of an observation
Do not know the reasons behind their actions
Easy for extraneous variables to take place
Give the 4 main types of observation
Naturalistic, structured,participant and non participant
What is a naturalistic observation ?
Observing participants without the manipulation of the environment. Studies the participant in a natural setting
What is a structured observation
Observation pre planned and set up. Lots of controls and a standardised procedure Set up in a lab.
What is a participant observation
The observer is pretending to be part of the setting
What is a non participant observation?
Researcher is not part of the setting of the observation
Define overt observation
When the researcher is open about their intentions and everyone is aware of what is happening
Define covert observation
Everything is concealed from the participant (so they participant does not know they are being observed )
What is an unstructured observation ?
When the observation is not set up and controlled so the researcher records everything
What was the aim of our observation report?
To see whether males or females smiled more during conversation
What were the research methods of our observation?
Naturalistic, covert, event sampling.
How many participants in our observation?
139 males and females of mixed age groups
How long did we observe our participants for?
One minute
What is classed as a smile in our observation
Teeth and no laughter
How did we collect our data?
Made a tally chart and tallied every time a participant smiled
What were the results of our observation?
Chi-squared told us that the difference between males and females miles is due to chance factors and is not due to gender
What do our results suggest?
That social learning theory can encourage other people to smile
Name some strengths of an observation
Qualitative and quantitative data
Can be done in many different ways such as a natural or a controlled environment
Objective data
What are The key features of an experiment?
Independent variable, depending on very well, controlled variables, hypotheses (More quantitive data)
What are the key features of the case study?
An in-depth study of one or a small group of people, both rich qualitative data and quantitive data.
What was my experiment?
To see whether listening to music affects the LTM
What is the IV and DV of my experiment
The IV is whether music is listened to or not whilst reading information and the DV is how many points they have recalled from the extract
What was my one-tailed hypothesis for my experiment
That the participants who listens to music whilst reading and trying to recall the facts about people with red hair, will remember less than the participant that doesn’t listen to the music
What were my controlled variables for my experiment
They both read the extract twice, all participants did the seven times table after reading the information, every participant did the seven times table for the same length of time, it’s the same information and it is the same song.