Measures

Front 1

operational defintion

Back 1

The phenomenato be measured should be defined in terms of theoperations used to measure them.

Front 2

ostensive defintion

Back 2

The phenomena to be observedshould be carefully described (textually, graphically,photographically, etc.) and examples can be given.Common in observational research (it is the basis ofethograms and systematic observations).

Front 3

reliable, reproducible and has a loss t construct validity

Back 3

a good operational definiton

Front 4

nominal scales

Back 4

categories, taxonomies, typologies.

e.g. x is different from y

Purely qualitative information.

Front 5

ordinal scales

Back 5

continuum or spectrum of observations. Rankingwithin a category is possible; often different names AND certainlydifferent quantities. Absolute values are not known.

e.g. x is greater than y;

Qualitative with some crude degree of "quantity"

Front 6

interval scales

Back 6

Common in psychology and neuroscience: rating scales, from 0 to 10 (0 doesnot mean no liking at all), IQ scale (0 does not mean no intelligence).

Quantitative; we know by "how much" the values differ

Front 7

ratio scales

Back 7

has an absolute zero point (the absence of the quantity can beindicated). Zero means zero

Quantitative; we know how much of the quantity exists.

Front 8

independent variable

Back 8

"X"

Treatment, condition, intervention, factor

Front 9

dependent variable

Back 9

"Y"

Outcome, response, result, measure

Front 10

environmental or situation variables

Back 10

Variables referring to themanipulation of the environment,

Front 11

insturctional variables

Back 11

Variables referring to what is told to aparticipant, instructed, or simply suggested. Applies mostly tohuman research, but potentially to animal research.

Front 12

controlled variable

Back 12

Any variable that is controlled or held constant across alltreatment conditions of an experiment.

Front 13

extraneous variable

Back 13

"Threatening variable" or "obscuring factors"; impacton the dependent variable

Front 14

confounding variable

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"confounds", an extraneous variable(usually unmonitored) that can inadvertently affect anotherexperimental variable

Front 15

1: random assignment of participants

2: keeping extraneous variables constant

3: match participants on the eextraneous varibale

4: “blocking" (creating blocks);The extraneous variable becomes an independent variable like the others.

Back 15

solutions to extraneous or counfounding variables

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screw you effect

Back 16

wanting to sabatoge the experiment

Front 17

co-operative subject effect

Back 17

Want to provide data that will support theresearch hypothesis

Front 18

evaluaiton aprehension

Back 18

Want positive evaluation; hypothesis-independent

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faithful subjects

Back 19

participante just do what they're are asked to do. Followinstructions, don’t worry about the hypothesis, don’t try to please