Research Methodology Vocabulary For Ib Psychology Hl

Front 1

empirical

Back 1

relying on or derived from observation, experimentation, or measurement

Front 2

psychology

Back 2

the discipline concerned with behavior and mental processes and how they are affected by an organism's physical state, mental state, and external environment

Front 3

Critical thinking

Back 3

the ability and willingness to assess claims and make judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons and evidence, rather than emotion or anecdote

Front 4

Functionalism

Back 4

an early psychological approach that emphasized the function or purpose of behavior and consciousness

Front 5

psychoanalysis

Back 5

a theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy, originally developed by Sigmund Freud, which emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts

Front 6

basic psychology

Back 6

the study of psychological issues in order to seek knowledge for its own sake rather than for its practical application

Front 7

Applied psychology

Back 7

the study of psychological issues that have direct practical significance and the application of psychological findings

Front 8

biological perspective

Back 8

a psychological approach that emphasizes bodily events and changes associated with actions, feelings, and thoughts

Front 9

learning perspective

Back 9

a psychological approach that emphasizes how the environment and experience affect a person's or animal's actions' it includes behaviorism and social-cognitive learning theories

Front 10

social-cognitive learning theory

Back 10

the theory that behavior is learned and maintained through observation and imitation of others, positive consequences, and cognitive processes such as plans and perceptions

Front 11

cognitive perspective

Back 11

a psychological approach that emphasizes mental processes in perception, memory, language, problem solving, and other areas of behavior

Front 12

Sociocultural perspective

Back 12

a psychological approach that emphasizes personal growth and the achievement of human potential , rather than the scientific understanding and assessment of behavior

Front 13

feminist psychology

Back 13

a psychological approach that analyzes the influence of social inequities on gender relations and on the behavior of the two sexes

Front 14

reductionism

Back 14

the process of reducing a phenomenon to a single type of explanation or to a limited set of elements or a particular type

Front 15

theory

Back 15

an organized system of assumptions and principles that purports to explain a specified set of phenomena and their interrelationships

Front 16

hypothesis

Back 16

a statement that attempts to predict or to account for a set of phenomena; scientific hypotheses specify relationships among events or variables and are empirically tested

Front 17

operational definition

Back 17

a precise definition of a term in a hypothesis, which specifies the operations for observing and measuring the process or phenomenon being defined

Front 18

principle of falsifiability

Back 18

the principle that a scientific theory must make predictions that are specific enough to expose the theory to the possibility of disconfirmation; that is, the theory must predict not only what will happen, but also what will not happen

Front 19

descriptive methods

Back 19

methods that yield descriptions of behavior but not necessarily causal explanations

Front 20

case study

Back 20

a detailed description of a particular individual being studied or treated

Front 21

observational studies

Back 21

a study in which the researcher carefully and systematically observes and records behavior without interfering with the behavior; it may involve either naturalistic or laboratory observation

Front 22

psychological tests

Back 22

procedures used to measure and evaluate personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes, interests, abilities, and values

Front 23

standardization

Back 23

in test construction, to develop uniform procedures for giving and scoring a test

Front 24

norms (in testing)

Back 24

in test construction, established standards of performance

Front 25

reliability

Back 25

In test construction, the consistency of scores derived from a test, from one time and place to another

Front 26

validity

Back 26

the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure

Front 27

surveys

Back 27

questionnaires and interviews that ask people directly about their experience, attitudes, or opinions

Front 28

representative sample

Back 28

a group f students, selected from a population for study, which matches the population on important characteristics such as age and sex

Front 29

volunteer bias

Back 29

a shortcoming of findings derived from a sample of volunteers instead of a representative sample; the volunteers may differ from those who did not volunteer

Front 30

correlation study

Back 30

a descriptive study that looks for a consistent relationship between two phenomena

Front 31

correlation

Back 31

a measure of how strongly two variables are related to one another

Front 32

variables

Back 32

characteristics of behavior or experience that can be measured or described by a numeric scale; variables are manipulated and assessed in scientific studies

Front 33

positive correlation

Back 33

an association between increases in one variable and increases in another

Front 34

negative correlation

Back 34

an association between increases in one variable and decreases in another

Front 35

coefficient of a correlation

Back 35

a measure of correlation that ranges in value from -1.00 to +1.00

Front 36

experiment

Back 36

a controlled test of a hypothesis in which the researcher manipulates one variable to discover its effect on another

Front 37

independent variable

Back 37

a variable that an experimenter manipulates

Front 38

dependent variable

Back 38

a variable that an experimenter predicts will be affected by manipulations of the independent variable

Front 39

control condition

Back 39

in an experiment, a comparison condition in which subjects are not exposed to the same treatment of the experimental condition

Front 40

random assignment

Back 40

a procedure for assigning people to experimental and control groups in which each individual has the same probability as any other or being assigned to a given group

Front 41

placebo

Back 41

an inactive substance or fake treatment used as a control in an experiment or given by a medical practitioner to a patient

Front 42

single-blind study

Back 42

an experiment in which subjects do not know whether they are in an experimental or a control group

Front 43

experimenter effects

Back 43

unintended changes in subjects' behavior due to cues inadvertently given by the experimenter

Front 44

double-blind study

Back 44

an experiment in which neither the subjects nor the individuals running the study show which subjects are in the control group and which are in the experimental group until after the results are tallied

Front 45

field research

Back 45

descriptive or experimental research conducted in a neutral setting outside the laboratory

Front 46

descriptive statistics

Back 46

statistical procedures that organize and summarize a body of data

Front 47

arithmetic mean

Back 47

an average that is calculated by adding up a set of quantities and dividing the sum by the total number of quantities in the set

Front 48

standard deviation

Back 48

a commonly used measure of variability that indicates the average difference between scores in a distribution and their mean

Front 49

inferential statistics

Back 49

statistical procedures that allow researches to draw inference about how statistically meaningful a study's results are

Front 50

significance tests

Back 50

statistical tests that show how likely it is that a study's results reoccurred merely by chance