Week 11 - Uncertainty Management (1st Half Only) Flashcards
What is uncertainty?
Things we can’t be 100% confident about
What is probabilistic determinism?
Establishes that there are some randomness in our findings - the relationships we’re interested in are affected by many things, additional causes
What is methodological uncertainty? and how do we manage it?
Related to the confidence we have that our research design and procedures allow us to answer the research question
What is external vs internal uncertainty? What are they produced by and reduced by?
Internal: WITHIN a particular study - what else might explain these findings
External: To what extent are these findings true BEYOND this study
Internal
Produced by: lack of control
Reduced by: experimental control
External
Produced by: sampling error and naive empiricism
Reduced by: appropriate sampling and theory development
How does methodological uncertainty compare to validity?
Validity is a quality of the study itself so does not change
BUT methodological uncertainty belongs to the consumers of research - and can thus change over time as KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING GROWS
What is statistical uncertainty?
Design and data collection techniques do NOT help minimise it - this is why we do STATISTICS in order to measure the uncertainty
TWO TYPES: descriptive and inferential
What is descriptive uncertainty?
Descriptive: not all participants provide exactly the same response
Arises from the fact that psychologists tend to make multiple observations and these observations produce different data
Differences BETWEEN (individuals/groups)
Differences WITHIN (individuals over time)
MEASUREMENT ERROR
What is inferential uncertainty?
Psychologists want to make inferences about a population based on data from a sample
Affected by:
‘Signal’ - DV/IV relationship under investigation
‘Noise’ - random variances
The sample size
All contribute to calculating the p value
Higher the p value (closer to 100%) there is greater uncertainty that the effect is ‘genuine’
