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Evaluating Findings in Psychology: Descriptive Statistics, Inferential Statistics, and Choosing the Best Explanation

This section explores the process of evaluating findings in psychology, including describing and assessing their reliability and meaningfulness. It also discusses the use of descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as the importance of choosing the best explanation for the results. Different research methods and the need for caution in interpreting single study results are also covered.

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Evaluating Findings in Psychology: Descriptive Statistics, Inferential Statistics, and Choosing the Best Explanation

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  1. Psychology Chapter 1 Section 7: Evaluating Findings

  2. Once you have some results in hand you must do 3 things • Describe them • Assess how reliable & meaningful they are • Figure out how to explain them

  3. Why do psychologists use statistics? • What do you do with the numbers or scores you collect? • Use descriptive statistics: Organize and summarize data • Often depicted in charts & graphs

  4. Compute group averages • Arithmetic mean • Calculate by adding up all the individual scores & dividing the result by the total number of scores • Mean does not tell you about such variability in the subjects responses

  5. Need standard deviation- tells you how clustered or spread out the individual scores are around the mean • The more spread out they are, the less “typical” the mean is

  6. To find out how impressive the data are, psychologists use inferential statistics • Assess how meaningful results are, such as differences between groups • Significance tests assess how likely it is that a study’s results occurred merely by chance

  7. If the likelihood that a result occurred by chance is extremely low, that is called statistically significant • The probability that the difference is “real” is overwhelming • Psychologists consider a result significant if it would be expected to occur by chance 5 or fewer times in 100 repetitions of the study

  8. From the Lab to the Real World • Last step is to figure out what the findings mean

  9. Choosing the best Explanation • Sometimes there are competing explanations for the same events • Must not go too far beyond the facts • Several explanations may fit those facts well, which means that more research will be needed to determine the best one • Sometimes that doesn’t emerge until a hypothesis has been tested in different ways

  10. Judging the result’s Importance • Statistical significance does not prove that a result is important, only that it is reliable • Many psychologists prefer other statistical procedures that reveal how powerful the IV really is & how much of the variation in the data the variable accounts for • Meta-analysis combines and analyzes data from many studies

  11. Tells the researcher how much of the variation in scores across the studies examined can be explained by a particular variable

  12. Different Research Methods • Cross-Sectional Study: Subjects of different ages are compared at a given time. • Longitudinal Study: Subjects are followed & periodically reassessed over a period of time

  13. Be suspicious of headlines that announce a sudden, major scientific breakthrough based on a single study

  14. Assignment • Read Taking Psychology With You on page 33

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