BELL RINGER 9.22.2011

1. BELL RINGER9.22.2011 Write down the easiest and hardest section of your exam. NEXT READING ASSIGNMENT: Modules 4 – 5 (pgs. 49 – 89). DUE MONDAY, OCT. 3

2. Unit 2: Research Methods AP Psychology Ms. Desgrosellier

3. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

4. The Scientific Method • Make observations, form theories, and then refine their theories in the light of new observations. • Scientific theory: an explanation using an integrated set of principles that organizes and predicts observations. • A good theory organizes the large amount of observations and information into a short list of principles • It must produce a testable predictions.

5. The Controlled Experiment • What are the parts of a psychological experiment? • Experiment: the researcher systematically manipulates a variable under controlled conditions, and observes the response.

6. The Controlled Experiment • What are the parts of a psychological experiment? • Experiment: the researcher systematically manipulates a variable under controlled conditions, and observes the response. • The ONLY way to prove cause and effect.

7. The Controlled Experiment • Hypotheses: predictions of how two or more factors are likely to be related. • The factor the researcher manipulates is the independent variable (IV).

8. The Controlled Experiment • The dependent variable (DV) is the behavior or mental process that is being measured, the factor that may change as a result of manipulation of the independent variable. • If the dependent variable changes when only the independent variable is changed, the researcher can conclude that the change in the IV caused the change in the DV.

9. The Controlled Experiment • Example: If we want to do an experiment to find out if smoking causes cancer: • What are potential hypotheses? • What is our IV? • What is our DV?

10. The Controlled Experiment • Example: If we want to do an experiment to find out if smoking causes cancer: • Hypotheses: Smoking causes cancer, etc. • IV: Smoking or not smoking. • DV: tests to see if you have cancer.

11. The Controlled Experiment • Example: If we want to do an experiment to see what the effect of drinking caffeine and math ability: • What are potential hypotheses? • What is our IV? • What is our DV?

12. The Controlled Experiment • Example: If we want to do an experiment to see what the effect of drinking caffeine and math ability: • Hypotheses: Drinking caffeine will improve math abilities; drinking caffeine will decrease math abilities. • IV: Caffeine • DV: Math test

13. The Controlled Experiment • Population: all of the individuals in the group that the experiment applies to. • e.g. If I am studying the effect of sports on high school students’ GPAs, who is my population? • e.g. If I am researching how much pop people in the United States drink, who is my population?

14. The Controlled Experiment • It’s difficult to study a whole population, so researchers use samples. • Sample: a subgroup of the population • Samples save money and time.

15. The Controlled Experiment • Ideal samples must be: • Representative of the population (e.g. if I want to study the effect of eating candy on men, would women be a good sample?) • Large (the bigger the sample, the more likely it is to represent the population.)

16. The Controlled Experiment • Ideal samples must be: • Random (everyone in the population has an equal chance of being selected.) • Random selection: everyone in the population has the same chance of being chosen.

17. The Controlled Experiment • When our samples involve people, they are called participants, or less commonly, subjects.

18. The Controlled Experiment • The sample is then randomly assigned into one of two groups: • Experimental Group: the sample that receives the treatment. • Control Group: the sample that does not receive the treatment.

19. Copy this table down!

20. The Controlled Experiment • e.g. Which group is which? In a study, one group receives an experimental drug and one receives a sugar pill. • e.g. In a study of how playing an instrument effects learning, one group plays an instrument and one does not.

21. The Controlled Experiment • This is called a between-subjects design: participants in the experimental and control groups are different individuals.

22. The Controlled Experiment • So what is a within-subjects design? • A research design that uses each participant as his or her own control. • e.g. To see if tutoring improves test scores, a group of students is not tutored for the first semester and then tutored for the second.

23. The Controlled Experiment • Operational definition: describes the specific procedure used to determine the presence of a variable. • Specific and observable way to define variables.

24. The Controlled Experiment Operational definitions make replication possible! Replication: repeating the essence of a research study, usually with different participants in different situations, to see whether the basic finding extends to other participants and circumstances.

25. The Controlled Experiment • Diet Coke vs. Regular Coke • Which one (if either) will float? • Hypotheses? • IV? • DV?

26. The Controlled Experiment • Diet Coke vs. Regular Coke • Why does Diet Coke float? Regular Coke is more dense (probably because of the sugar content) and sinks. Diet is less dense!

27. Bell Ringer9.26.2011 Correct the following “homework” by Ms. Desgrosellier. What’s wrong with the experiment?: I am doing an experiment because I believe that high school students who take AP Psychology students are smarter than their peers. My IV is taking AP Psych and my DV is not taking AP Psych. My population is all US citizens, so a sample of 10 students from Uplift HS is an ideal sample. I will divide my participants into two groups and compare them to each other, so this is a within subjects design.

28. Bell Ringer9.26.2011 NEXT READING ASSIGNMENT: Modules 4 – 5 (pgs. 49 – 89). DUE MONDAY, OCT. 3

29. The Controlled Experiment • Create an operational definition: • With your group, create an operational definition for an emotion. • It must be OBSERVABLE! • e.g. If I was describing surprise: • Wide eyes, open mouth, verbal exclamations or shocked silence.

30. The Controlled Experiment Why is randomness so important? To eliminate bias and control confounding variables. Confounding variables: differences between the experimental and control groups NOT caused by the independent variable.

31. The Controlled Experiment • Confounding variables • e.g. You do an experiment to find out if drinking orange juice in morning helps students stay awake. • Half your students drink juice and half do not, and then you count the sleeping students in 1st period. • The half that drinks the juice stays awake. • What are some confounding variables?

32. The Controlled Experiment • Confounding variables • Eating breakfast • Amount of sleep • Gender • Students’ academic ability • etc.

33. The Controlled Experiment • When we have a lot of control, we can determine cause and effect. • EXPERIMENTS ARE THE ONLY WAY TO DETERMINE CAUSE AND EFFECT!!!

34. Eliminating Confounding Variables • experimenter bias (experimenter expectancy effect): a phenomenon that occurs when a researcher’s expectations or preferences about the outcome of a study influence the results obtained.

35. Eliminating Confounding Variables • e.g. If you think that the drug in your study works really well, you might ask participants who took the drug, “You feel better, don’t you?” • e.g. If you think that watching TV negatively effects grades, you might unconsciously put all the lower level students into the TV group (experimental group) – note: this is without random assignment.

36. Eliminating Confounding Variables • e.g. even smiling at one group and not another can effect the results – like if you think that playing sports makes students nicer, you might smile at the athletes and not smile at the non-athletes, affecting their behavior.

37. Eliminating Confounding Variables • demand characteristics: clues participants discover about the purpose of the study, including rumors they hear about how they should respond. • e.g. if you have two groups coming in to do a study, and the first group tells the second everything that’s going to happen. • e.g. if you somehow indicate that one group is only receiving a placebo (e.g. “It doesn’t really matter when you take your pill, or even if you forget!”).

38. Eliminating Confounding Variables • To control for demand characteristics, researchers use two methods: • single-blind procedure: a research design in which the participants don’t know which treatment group – experimental or control – they are in.

39. Eliminating Confounding Variables • To control for demand characteristics, researchers use two methods: • double-blind procedure: a research design in which neither the experimenter nor the participants know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group. • How would we do this? • e.g. assign numbers; a second experimenter, etc.

40. Eliminating Confounding Variables • Placebo: an imitation treatment usually used in a drug study. • e.g. a sugar pill instead of a real drug. • placebo effect: when subjects believe that the treatment will be effective and they think they experience an improvement in health or well-being, even though they did not receive the actual drug.

41. Eliminating Confounding Variables • “Placebo effect” now refers to any case when the experimental participants change their behavior without of any kind of experimental manipulation. • Counterbalancing: a procedure that assigns half the subjects to one of the treatments first and the other half of the subjects to the other treatment first.

42. DO NOW: Identify any bias or confounding variables in the following experiment. I think that studying your notes every night will increase your test scores in Psychology. I split my class into two groups: the half that scored the highest on the last exam and the half that scored the lowest. Then, I have my highest scoring half study every night, while my lowest only studies before our next test. I then compare their test scores and find that my hypothesis is correct: those who studied every night had higher test scores!

43. DO NOW: Identify the bias, confounding variables, demand characteristics and/or placebo effect. I’m doing a study on the effect of eating cupcakes on intelligence. My participants do not know what I am studying. Half of them will eat a cupcake every morning for a week and half will eat a plain bagel. At the end of the week I will give them an IQ test. I make sure to smile at the cupcake group when they are eating, but not at the bagel group. One participant thinks that “bagels” are my experimental condition, and they study extra hard every night and end up with the highest test score. However, overall my cupcake group has the highest average.

44. Quasi-Experimental Research Quasi-experimental research: similar to controlled experiments, but participants are not randomly assigned. e.g. male vs. female; young vs. old; students in period 2 vs. period 8 Because of confounding variables, quasi-experiments DO NOT determine cause and effect.

45. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH • Experiments cost time, money, and are not very generalizable. • Correlational methods look at the relationship between two variables without establishing a cause and effect relationship. • The goal is to determine to what extent one variable predicts the other.

46. Naturalistic Observation • observing and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to manipulate and control the situation. • e.g. observing animals in the wild; unobtrusively videotaping parent-child interactions • N.O. has revealed that chimpanzees sometimes use tools like humans (using a stick to get to termites). • Good for generating ideas for other research.

47. Survey Method • Researchers use questionnaires or interviews to ask a large number of people questions about their behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes. • Participants should be representative of the population. • How do we get a sample to be representative? • RANDOM SAMPLING!

48. DO NOW 9.27.2011 Identify the bias, confounding variables, demand characteristics and/or placebo effect. I’m doing a study on the effect of eating cupcakes on intelligence. My participants do not know what I am studying. Half of them will eat a cupcake every morning for a week and half will eat a plain bagel. At the end of the week I will give them an IQ test. I make sure to smile at the cupcake group when they are eating, but not at the bagel group. One participant thinks that “bagels” are my experimental condition, and they study extra hard every night and end up with the highest test score. However, overall my cupcake group has the highest average.

49. Survey Method • Accuracy of data is an issue because people sometimes distort their answers or fail to recall information correctly. • The data collected is good for generating ideas for other research.

50. Survey Method • Ex post facto studies: retrospective studies that look at an effect to find the cause.