PSY 200 Study Guide Exam 1 (Research
Methods)
Case Study - answerstudies ONE ENTITY in great detail.
Case Study (Pros) - answerOnly describes one entity well
Case Study (Cons) - answerCannot prove causation
Cannot test hypotheses
NO generalizability (you cannot apply the findings to other peo...
Case Study - answer✔studies ONE ENTITY in great detail.
Case Study (Pros) - answer✔Only describes one entity well
Case Study (Cons) - answer✔Cannot prove causation
Cannot test hypotheses
NO generalizability (you cannot apply the findings to other people).
Observer bias -you interpret the info in a biased way
Laborious and time-consuming to spend years watching someone.
Observational reactivity - People act differently when they know they are being watched.
naturalistic observation - answer✔study the behavior in its natural environment.
naturalistic observation (pros) - answer✔You can prove that this behavior does really occur in
the real world (call high external validity).
naturalistic observation (cons) - answer✔Cannot prove causation
Sample bias -the people you observe may have more extreme behaviors than the rest of the
population.
Observer bias -you interpret the info in a biased way
Laborious and time-consuming to spend years watching someone.
Observational reactivity - People act differently when they know they are being watched.
laboratory observation - answer✔creating an artificial environment and bring people in to
observe what they do.
Laboratory observation (pros) - answer✔Faster than waiting for it to occur in the real world
Laboratory Observation (cons) - answer✔Cannot prove causation
Sample bias -the people you observe may have more extreme behaviors than the rest of the
population.
Observer bias -you interpret the info in a biased way
Observational reactivity - People act differently when they know they are being watched.
The situation you create can be VERY ARTIFICAL (called low external validity)
correlational research - answer✔looking for relationships between different variables.
Correlational Research (cons) - answer✔correlation ≠ causation
Sample bias -the people who answer the survey may have more extreme behaviors than those
who don't.
Social desirability bias, malingering, and ignorance -easy for people to lie
Poor operationalization's -Getting the wording of the questions right is very difficult
experiment - answer✔Only study that can determine causation and influence
1) randomly assign subjects to conditions
2) directly control the independent variable.
experiment (cons) - answer✔Expensive
Confound variables-any difference between the conditions (e.g. hot temperature in only one of
the rooms, bad smell in one room, noise outside one of the rooms) can cause the difference in the
outcome variable.
Experimenter bias -if the experimenter acts differently with one group than another, he behavior
may subtly influence the results in a biased way.
It can be hard to produce experimental realism (subjects become absorbed by the experiment)
and mundane realism (the experiment looks like real world situations).
quasi-experiment - answer✔missing one of the two requirements for an experiment (random
assignment of subject to conditions) or have two independent variables (one with random
assignment and one without).
quasi-experiment (pros) - answer✔You can study independent variables that cannot be
manipulated.
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