Weiten Ch 2
Terms
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- anecdotal evidence
- personal stories about specific incidents and experiences
- case study
- an in-depth investigation of an individual subject
- confounding of variables
- a condition that exists whenever two variables are linked together in a way that makes it difficult to sort out their independent effects
- control group
- subjects in a study who do notrecieve the special treatment given to the experimental group
- correlation
- the extent to which two variables are related to each other
- correlation coefficient
- a numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables
- data collection techniques
- procedures for making empirical observations and measurements
- dependent variable
- in an experiment, the variable that is thought to be affected by the manipulation of the independent variable
- descriptive statistics
- statistics that are used to organize and summarize data
- double-blind procedure
- a research strategy in which neither subjects nor experimenters know which subjects are in the experimental or control groups
- experiment
- a research method in which the investigatormanipulates a variable under carefully controlled conditions and observes whether any changes occur in a second variableas a result
- experimental group
- the subjects in a study who recieve some special treatment in regard to the independent variable
- experimenter bias
- a phenomenon that occurs when a researcher's expectations or preferences about the outcome of a study influence the results obtained
- extraneous variables
- any variables other than the independent variable that seen likely to influence the dependent variable in a specific study
- hypothesis
- a tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables
- independent variable
- in an experiment, a condition or event that an experimenter varies in order to see its impact on another variable
- inferential statistics
- statistics that are used to interpret data and draw conculsions
- journal
- a periodical that publishes technical and scholarly material, usually in a narrowly defined area of inquiry
- mean
- the arithmetic average of the scores in a distribution
- median
- the score that falls exactly in the center of a distribution of scores
- mode
- the score that occurs most frequently in a distribution
- naturalistic observation
- a descriptive research method in which the researcher engages in careful, usually prolonged, ovservation of behavior without intervening directly with the subjects
- operational definition
- a definition that describes the actions or observationd that will be made to measure or control a variable
- participants
- the persons or animals whose behavior is systematically observed in a study
- placebo effects
- the fact that subjects' expectations can lead them to experience some change even though they recieve an an empty, fake, or ineffectual treatment
- population
- the larger collection of animals or people from which a sample is drawn and that researchers want to generalize about
- random assignment
- the constitution of groups in a study such that all subjects have an equal chance of being assigned to any group or condition
- replication
- the reptition of a study to see whether the earlier results are duplicated
- research methods
- differing approaches to the manipulation and control of variables in empirical studies
- response set
- a tendency to respond ti questions in a particular way that is unrekated to the content of the questions
- sample
- the collection of subjects selected for observation in an emprical study
- sampling bias
- a problem that occurs when a sample is not representative of the population from which it is drawn
- social desirability bias
- a tendency to give socially approved answers to questions about oneself
- standard deviation
- an index of the amount of variability in a set of data
- statistical significance
- the condition that exists when the probability that the observed findings are due to chance is very low
- statistics
- the use of mathematics to organize, summarize, and interpret numerical data
- survey
- a descriptive research method in which researchers use questionnaires or interviews to gather info about specific aspects of subjects' behavior
- theory
- a system of interrelated ideas that is used to explain a set of observations
- variability
- the extent to which the scores in a data set tend to vary from each other and from the mean
- variables
- any measurable conditions, events, characteristics, or behaviors that are controlled or observed in a study
- meta-analysis
- combining the statistical results of many studies of the same question, yielding an estimate of the size and consistency of a variable's effects