AICE Psychology - Research Methods Vocabulary

Measure of central tendency calculated by adding up all the scores and dividing by the number of scores in the data set.

• Mean

• Median

• Mode

• Range

Way in which participants are allocated to levels of the IV.

• Experimental design

• Random sampling

• Control group

• Longitudinal study

Situation where participants' performance declines because they have experienced an experimental task more than once, e.g., due to boredom or tiredness.

• Fatigue effect

• Practice effect

• Transfer effect

• Testing effect

Items put into a questionnaire, interview or test to disguise the aim of the study by hiding the important questions among irrelevant ones so that participants are less likely to alter their behavior by working out the aims.

• Filler questions

• Leading questions

• Closed questions

• Open-ended questions

Situation where participants' performance improves because they experience the experimental task more than once, e.g., due to familiarity or learning the task.

• Practice effect

• Learning curve

• Repetition effect

• Familiarity bias

Extent to which two researchers interpreting qualitative responses in a questionnaire or interview, will produce the same records from the same raw data.

• Inter-rater reliability

• Intra-rater reliability

• Content validity

• Construct validity

Features of the experimental situation which give away the aims. They can cause participants to try to change their behavior, e.g., to match their beliefs about what is supposed to happen, which reduces the validity of the study.

• Demand Characteristics

• Experimental Bias

• Participant Expectancy

• Researcher Influence

Investigation looking for a causal relationship in which an IV is manipulated and is expected to be responsible for changes in the DV.

• Experiment

• Survey

• Observation

• Case Study

Confounding variables that may not have been identified and eliminated in an experiment, which can confuse the results. It may be a feature of the participants or situation

• Uncontrolled variable

• Controlled variable

• Independent variable

• Dependent variable

Apply the findings of a study more widely, e.g., to other settings and populations. They take the following forms: Population validity and ecological validity.

• Generalizability

• Specificity

• Reliability

• Validity