Stats & Research Methods

Question 1

What are the challenges to the assessment of socio-emotional problems in children?

Answer 1

• Rapid developmental transitions (clinical relevance changes over time)
• Lack of data integration from different sources and methods (who has given info/ timeframe/ method)
• Level of impairment and functioning (ability to adapt/ development of skills/ psychical health)

Question 2

What methods are used to assess children?

Answer 2

• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Behavioural assessments

Question 3

What resources are used to assess children?

Answer 3

• Children
• Parents
• Teachers
• Peers
• Observers

Question 4

What factors affect children’s accurate responding?

Answer 4

• Age
• Interviewing techniques
• Response formats
• Phrasing or complexity of questions
• Factual information versus abstract concepts

Question 5

What are common methodological issues in assessing children?

Answer 5

• Presence of observer (issues with reactivity)
• Type of task (structured versus unstructured)
• Location of observations (laboratory or participant’s home).

Question 6

Name the coding categories when assessing children

Answer 6

-Exhaustive=
Include all the behaviours 
-Mutually exclusive=
Behaviours can be classified as falling into only one category
-Reliable=
Agreement between two or more observers.

Question 7

What are the +/- of observational methods

Answer 7

• Pro’s=
• Researcher defines and chooses target behaviours
• Can look at microscopic processes and mechanisms
• Have data on rates and frequencies.
• Con’s=
• Observations are expensive
• Time consuming
• Require extensive training

Question 8

Outline the Preschool Five Minute Speech Sample

Answer 8

-Notes

Question 9

Name the psychophysiological methods

Answer 9

• Structural and functional Magnetic Resonance (MRI, fMRI)
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
• Electroencephalography (EEG) and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)
• Eye-tracking

Question 10

What is a structural MRI

Answer 10

• Measures MR signals from hydrogen over areas of the brain, creating MR images, in which the parts of the brain with more hydrogen would appear brighter than parts of the brain with less hydrogen
• This contrast between tissues dependents on the amount (density) of hydrogen

Question 11

What does the BOLD signal in an functional MRI (fMRI) refer to?

Answer 11

• Intrinisc contrast agent (internal body agent) such as oxygen is measured
• fMRI measures if There is an increase in the supply of oxygenated blood to the more active brain cells- this increase in blood flow is greater than oxygen consumption by those cells
• This reduces the amount of de-oxyHb in active brain regions relative to less active regions – which results in an increase in the MR signal (because de-oxyHb reduces the MR signal)

Question 12

What is reverse inference

Answer 12

• Activation of a given brain area is specifically associated with a psychological process, then finding activation in that brain area indicates the presence of the associated psychological process

Question 13

What is the validity of reverse inference based on?

Answer 13

• How often a pattern of brain activation is detected when the target psychological process is likely to occur (sensitivity)
• How rarely that pattern of brain activation is elicited by other processes (specificity)

Question 14

What are the +/- of fMRI’s

Answer 14

• Safe neuroimaging method
• High spatial resolution
• Low temporal resolution
• Patients with metal not suitable
• Claustrophobic
• Noisy so difficult to incorporate auditory stimulus
• Causality inferences

Question 15

What is TMS?

Answer 15

-Virtual lesion created through magnetic pulse which can inhibit or excite neurons

Question 16

What confounding variables does TMS create for itself?

Answer 16

• Creates loud sharp noise/ sensations on scalp/ muscle twitches which can be confounding
• Can be accounted for by testing against non-target areas

Question 17

What are the +/- of TMS

Answer 17

• Relatively high spatial resolution
• High temporal resolution
• Reversible so allows for within subject tests
• Limited to surface regions
• Subtle effects which can be hard to measure

Question 18

What are EEG’s/ ERP’s

Answer 18

-EEG measures local field potential of neurons, ERP is a segment of an EEG often taken when a stimulus is presented

Question 19

What are the +/- of EEG’s/ ERP’s

Answer 19

• High temporal resolution
• Low spatial resolution, inverse problem
• ERP can isolate neuron firing signatures of a certain processes

Question 20

What is eye tracking?

Answer 20

• Fovea (only area with colour receptors) has highest visual resolution allowing for cortical magnification as it has a dedicated dis-proportionally large brain area for processing
• Measured via infra red which reflected, this is weaker in the centre of the fovea (pupil) which measures timing location/velocity/path of movement

Question 21

What are the +/- of eye tracking?

Answer 21

• High temporal and spatial resolution
• Difficult to monitor covert attention and what exactly is being attended to
• Challenging for those with corrected vision or visual aids

Question 22

What four main principles must be considered in the study of animals?

Answer 22

• Sampling= who to watch and what to measure

- Recording= how to record and when to measure

Question 23

What is an ethogram?

Answer 23

-List of behaviours being observed with definition for each

Question 24

What are the sampling techniques?

Answer 24

• Ad libitum= all behaviours recorded
• Focal= focus on an individual
• Scan= scan group ta regular intervals
• Behavioural= record occurrence of particular behaviour

Question 25

What are the recording techniques?

Answer 25

• Continuous= exact record of behaviours for each occurence
• Instantaneous= divide sample period into short intervals and record behaviour on the time point
• One-zero= record whether behaviour has occurred in sample period

Question 26

What are the measures of behaviour?

Answer 26

• frequency= number of occurrences
• Duration
• Latency= time form specific stim to occurrence of behaviour
• Bout= A/B/C behaviours assessed as whole behaviour such as duet of singing birds

Question 27

What is a time-activity budget

Answer 27

• Time + energy = motivation
• If not timed a rate of occurrence used (displayed as frequency)
• Group average is used error bars are plotted on graph and if continuous method used no error bars

Question 28

How should animals be compared statistically?

Answer 28

-One-sample t-test; good for comparing a treatment against
a baseline.
- Paired t-tests, good for comparing data from a population
measured twice.
- You’ve measured a behaviour in a range of sexes or ages
groups, and you want to see where a difference lies? Posthoc tests for a one-way ANOVA.
- Repeated measures testing… Really good models available
to provide strong analysis of experiments using the same individual

Question 29

What are the 5 contingent problems in qualitative methods?

Answer 29

• The deletion of the interviewer (body language/ structure of transcript)
• The conventions of representation of interaction
• The specificity of observations
• The unavailability of the interview set-up (recruitment process/ where parts of transcript are originally from)
• The failure to consider interviews as interaction.

Question 30

What are the benefits of using a tape recorder

Answer 30

• The researcher can concentrate and listen and respond better
• The discussion flows better when there are no distractions
• In note taking there is an increased risk of the researcher being more subjective
• The entire interview/observation is recorded, which gives a better, more holistic picture of what is going on
• The participants may feel less observed if the tape recorded is used in a discreet way
• During analysis, the researcher has the opportunity to go back over material

Question 31

What are sources of naturally occurring data?

Answer 31

• Helpline data
• Mediation
• Weight loss data
• Police Interview

Question 32

What is discourse analysis?

Answer 32

• The study of language to make inferences about interaction
• Focuses on management of relations between mental states and external world through empirical analysis of talk and text in context

Question 33

What does discourse analysis study?

Answer 33

• speaker interactions
• Narratives functions in areas such as sex offender therapy and role of cognitive distortion
• How people build descriptions

Question 34

What are the epistemological assumptions of discourse analysis?

Answer 34

-common sense analysis concept that everyday life is contextual so does not need to be altered to be scientifically quantifiable

Question 35

What are the criticisms of discourse analysis?

Answer 35

-Subjectivity=
Data are interpreted and therefore influenced by the personal experiences and beliefs of the researcher.
-Replicability =
Because the researcher influences the data, it cannot necessarily be replicated.
-Generalisability=
There is no attempt to recruit a ‘representative’ sample and the people selected do not reflect the population.
-Transparency=
It is sometimes difficult to establish exactly what was done and how conclusions were arrived at.
-Credibility
Is the researcher’s interpretation of the data credible?
(Respondent validation/
Triangulation)
-Transferability
Is the description provided rich enough in detail for others to make judgements about its transferability to other milieux? -Dependability
Can the research be “audited”?
-Confirmability
Is it apparent that the researcher has not overtly allowed personal values or theoretical inclinations to influence the interpretation

Question 36

How can DA criticisms be combated?

Answer 36

• More than one investigator (credibility).
• More than one method (triangulation) (credibility).
• “Thick description” (transferability).
• Research should be conducted in an explicit and systematic way (dependability).
• Meticulous record keeping, including a separate diary (dependability).
• Openness and honesty about theoretical perspectives and biases (confirmability).