STATS & RMS

Question 1

What is the difference between a between-subjects design and a within-subjects design?

Answer 1

A between-subjects design, (or a between-groups design) every participant experiences only one condition, and you compare group differences between participants in various conditions.

In a within-subjects design, every participant experiences every condition.

Question 2

What is an ANOVA test used for?

Answer 2

An ANOVA test is used to compare the means of three or more groups to determine if there are significant differences between them.

Question 3

What is a mediator/ Mediation?

Answer 3

CAUSE
A Mediator is the reason for the effect the IV has on the DV.

i.e.: if the IV is curiosity, and the DV is learning, then the mediator is ‘discovery’, because the reason curiosity has an effect on learning, is because curious people are more likely to discover new things, and learn. The act of discovery is what is causing it.

Question 4

What is a Moderator/Moderation?

Answer 4

EFFECT SIZE
Moderators contextualise the event , i.e.: if curiosity is the IV, and learning is the DV, then ‘distractions’ could be the moderator. I.e dampen the positive relationship between curiosity and learning.

A moderator must NOT be the causal result of the IV.

Question 5

What is a Factorial/2-factor ANOVA used for?

Answer 5

When comparing groups based on 2 or more independent variables.

Question 6

What is a single-factor ANOVA used for?

Answer 6

When comparing three or more groups, with 1 independent variable.

Question 7

What does a One-Way Between-Subjects ANOVA do?

Answer 7

A One-Way Between-Subjects ANOVA compares the means between more than two independent groups, such as comparing the difference between groups A, B and C.

Question 8

What is a One-Way Within-Subjects ANOVA ?

Answer 8

A One-Way Within-Subjects (repeated measures) ANOVA is used to determine whether three or more group means are different where the participants are the same in each group.

Question 9

What is a co-variable?

Answer 9

The variables investigated in a correlation.

Question 10

What is a correlational analysis?

Answer 10

A mathematical technique where the researcher looks to see whether scores for two co-variables are related.

Question 11

What is counterbalancing?

Answer 11

A way of trying to control for order effects in a repeated measures design, e.g. half the participants do condition A followed by B and the other half do B followed by A.

Question 12

What is the critical value?

Answer 12

A critical value is the value of the test statistic which defines the upper and lower bounds of a confidence interval, or which defines the threshold of statistical significance in a statistical test.

Question 13

What are demand characteristics?

Answer 13

Demand characteristics occur when participants try to make sense of the research situation they are in and try to guess the purpose of the research or try to present themselves in a good way.

Question 14

What is the dependant variable?

Answer 14

The variable that is measured to tell you the outcome.

Question 15

What is a directional hypotheis?

Answer 15

A one-tailed hypothesis that states the direction of the difference or relationship (e.g. boys are more helpful than girls).

Question 16

What is a dispersion measure?

Answer 16

A dispersion measure shows how a set of data is spread out, examples are the range and the standard deviation.

Question 17

What is a double-blind control?

Answer 17

Participants are not told the true purpose of the research and the experimenter is also blind to at least some aspects of the research design.

Question 18

What is ecological validity?

Answer 18

The extent to which the findings of a research study are able to be generalized to real-life settings.

Question 19

What are the 3 main ethical issues in research?

Answer 19

There are 3 main ethical issues that occur in psychological research – deception, lack of informed consent and lack of protection of participants.

Question 20

What is evaluation apprehension?

Answer 20

Participants’ behaviour is distorted as they fear being judged by observers.

Question 21

What is the experimental group?

Answer 21

The group that received the experimental treatment (e.g. sleep deprivation).

Question 22

What is external validity?

Answer 22

Whether it is possible to generalise the results beyond the experimental setting.

Question 23

What is an extraneous variable?

Answer 23

Variables that if not controlled may affect the DV and provide a false impression than an IV has produced changes when it hasn’t.

Question 24

What is a Quasi experiment?

Answer 24

An experiment often conducted in controlled conditions where the IV simply exists so there can be no random allocation to the conditions. (often you would recruit a target sample).

Question 25

What is reliability?

Answer 25

Whether something is consistent. In the case of a study, whether it is replicable.

Question 26

What is a representative sample?

Answer 26

A sample that that closely matched the target population as a whole in terms of key variables and characteristics.

Question 27

What is a sample?

Answer 27

A group of people that are drawn from the target population to take part in a research investigation.

Question 28

What is a sign test?

Answer 28

A statistical test used to analyse the direction of differences of scores between the same or matched pairs of subjects under two experimental conditions.

Question 29

What is the meaning of significance?

Answer 29

If the result of a statistical test is significant it is highly unlikely to have occurred by chance.

Question 30

What is validity?

Answer 30

Whether something is true – measures what it sets out to measure.

Question 31

Nominal data is...?

Answer 31

Data are catergories with no ranking, e.g.: sex, religion.

Question 32

Ordinal data is...?

Answer 32

Data are categories that have some intrinsic ranking, i.e.: attiude scores, satisfaction ratings.

Question 33

Continuous scale data is...?

Answer 33

Data are ordered categories with a meaningful metric, e.g.: age in years, income in thousands of dollars.

Question 34

what does 'r' represent in correlational analysis?

Answer 34

the strength and direction of the linear correlation (relationship). e.g.: 0.99 = strong positive. -0.99 = strong negative. 0 = no relationship.

Question 35

what is "p" in correlational analysis?

Answer 35

"p" is the population correlation.

Question 35

What is a "Pearsons" test/what does it do?

Answer 35

The "Pearson" correlation coefficient (r) is the most common way of measuring a linear correlation. It is a number between –1 and 1 that measures the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables.

Question 35

What is a covariant?

Answer 35

A covariant is a measure of the relationship between two random variables.

Question 36

what is "determinism" ?

Answer 36

determinism is the assumption that all events have causes.

Question 37

what is "empiricism" ?

Answer 37

empiricism is the process of learning things through direct observation.

Question 38

What is validity ?

Answer 38

Validity refers to the accuracy of research.

Question 39

What is reliability?

Answer 39

Reliability refers to the consistency of research.

Question 40

What kind of variables does experimental research always involve?

Answer 40

Experimental research always involves a manipulated variable, also called an experimental factor or independent variable.

Question 41

What kind of variables does correlational research focus on?

Answer 41

correlational research focuses on subject variables, that vary across individuals and situations i.e.: attributes that pre-exist the study or attributes that occur naturally during the study. E.g.: age/sex/SES/phone use/gaming.

Question 42

What is a limitation of a Quasi-Experimental design?

Answer 42

The lack of random assignment in quasi-experimental designs means we need to be more cautious about causal inferences.

Question 43

What is a correlational design ?

Answer 43

corelational designs involves two or more variables that you cannot manipulate experimentally.

Question 44

What are two problems to consider related to correlational designs?

Answer 44

1.) Direction of causation problem: a correlation does not indicate which variable is the cause and which is the effect. 2.) Third variable problem: the correlation between 2 variables may be the result of some 3rd (unspecified) variable.

Question 45

What are 2 cons of observational methods in correlational design?

Answer 45

observational methods involve interpretation and judgement, and they lack a control.

Question 46

When would you use a non-parametric test?

Answer 46

If you don't meet the sample size guidelines for the parametric tests and you are not confident that you have normally distributed data, you should use a non-parametric test.

Question 47

What is a parametric test?

Answer 47

1. the data are normally distributed 2. the groups that are being compared have similar variance 3. the data are independent

Question 48

What are 2 examples of non-parametric within-subjects test?

Answer 48

-Sign test -Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs test.

Question 49

What is an example of a between-subjects Non-parametric test?

Answer 49

-Mann-Whitney U test/Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test.

Question 50

What are some limitations of the sign-test?

Answer 50

- ignores size difference - ignores tied scores - only assess 2 conditions - the magnitude of the change is ignored ( tells you if there is an effect just not what the effect is).