Research Methods

Research is what makes the difference between facts and opinions. Facts are observable realities, and opinions are personal judgments, conclusions, or …

There are many research methods available to psychologists in their efforts to understand, describe, and explain behavior and the cognitive and biological …

If you want to understand how behavior occurs, one of the best ways to gain information is to simply observe the behavior in its natural context. However, …

Often, psychologists develop surveys as a means of gathering data. Surveys are lists of questions to be answered by research participants, and can be …

Some researchers gain access to large amounts of data without interacting with a single research participant. Instead, they use existing records to answer …

Sometimes we want to see how people change over time, as in studies of human development and lifespan. When we test the same group of individuals …

In cross-sectional research, a researcher compares multiple segments of the population at the same time. If they were interested in people's dietary …

The most basic experimental design involves two groups: the experimental group and the control group. The two groups are designed to be the same except …

Factorial Analysis is an experimental design that applies Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistical procedures to examine a change in a dependent variable …

The placebo effect occurs when people's expectations or beliefs influence or determine their experience in a given situation. In other words, simply …

Ideally, the people who observe and record the children’s behavior are unaware of who was assigned to the experimental or control group, in order to …

Today, scientists agree that good research is ethical in nature and is guided by a basic respect for human dignity and safety. However, this has not …

Correlation means that there is a relationship between two or more variables (such as ice cream consumption and crime), but this relationship does not …

While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually …

Reliability and validity are two important considerations that must be made with any type of data collection. Reliability refers to the ability to …

Regression toward the mean (“RTM”) is a phenomenon in which extremely high or low values—for example, and individual’s blood …

The "center" of a data set is also a way of describing location. The two most widely used measures of the "center" of the data are the …

In the field of psychology, there are several ways to organize measurements of a trait, feature, or characteristic (i.e., variables). Qualitative …

Once data is collected from both the experimental and the control groups, a statistical analysis is conducted to find out if there are meaningful …