Research Methods Test #1

Front 1

Authority

Back 1

A way of knowing, proposed by Charles Peirce, in which a person develops a belief by agreeing with someone perceived to be an expert.

Front 2

A priori method

Back 2

A way of knowing, proposed by Charles Peirce, in which a person develops a belief by reasoning and reaching agreement with others who are convinced of the merits of the reasoned argument.

Front 3

Empiricism

Back 3

The process of learning things through direct observation or experience, and reflection on those experiences.

Front 4

Belief perseverance

Back 4

Unwillingness to consider any evidence that contradicts a strongly held view; similar to Peirce's principle of tendency.

Front 5

Confirmation bias

Back 5

A tendency to search out and pay special attention to information that supports one's beliefs, while ignoring information that contradicts a belief.

Front 6

Availability Heuristic

Back 6

Social cognition bias in which vivid or memorable events lead people to overestimate the frequency of occurrence of these events.

Front 7

Determinism

and

Discoverability

Back 7

Events (including psychological ones) have causes.

By using agreed-upon scientific methods, these causes can be discovered, with some degree of confidence.

Front 8

Statistical determinism

Back 8

Events can be predicted, but only with a probability greater than chance.

Front 9

Objectivity

Back 9

Said to exist when observations can be verified by more than one observer.

Front 10

Data-driven

Back 10

Belief of research psychologists that conclusions about behavior should be supported by data collected scientifically.

Front 11

Empirical question

Back 11

A question that can be answered by making objective observations.

Front 12

Falsification

Back 12

Research strategy advocated by Popper that emphasizes putting theories to the test by trying to disprove or falsify them.

Front 13

Anecdotal evidence

Back 13

Evidence from a single case that illustrates a phenomenon; when relied on exclusively, as in pseudoscience, faulty conclusions can easily be drawn.

Front 14

Effort justification

Back 14

After expending a large amount of time or effort to obtain some goal, people giving the effort feel pressured to convince themselves that the effort was worthwhile, even if the resulting outcome is less positive than originally thought.

Front 15

Description

Back 15

A goal of psychological science in which behaviors are accurately classified or sequences of environmental stimuli and behavioral events are accurately listed.

Front 16

Laws

Back 16

Regular, predictable relationships between events.

Front 17

Ethics

Back 17

A set of principles prescribing behaviors that are morally correct.

Front 18

Critical incidents

Back 18

Method, used by ethics committees, that surveys psychologists and asks for examples of unethical behavior by psychologists.

Front 19

General Principles of the APA code of Ethics

Back 19

A) Beneficence and Non-Malfeasance - weight costs and benefits

B) Fidelity and Responsibility - be aware of responsibility to society and to use highest standards of professional behavior.

C) Integrity - to be scrupulously honest in all aspects of the research enterprise.

D) Justice- treat everyone involved with fairness and to avoid any bias.

E) Respect of Peoples' Rights and Dignity - safeguard the welfare and protect the rights of those volunteering as participants.

Front 20

Informed consent

Back 20

The idea that persons should be given sufficient information about a study to make their decision to participate as a research subject an informed and voluntary one.

Front 21

Assent

Back 21

To give assent is to say "yes"; in the SRCD code of ethics for research with children, refers to the willingness on the part of the child to participate in the study.

Front 22

Experimental confederate

Back 22

An individual who appears to be either another subject in an experiment, but is in fact a part of the experiment and in the employ of the experimenter.

Front 23

Operationism

Back 23

Philosophy of science approach, proposed by Bridgman, that held that all scientific concepts should be defined in terms of a set of operations to be performed.

Front 24

Operational definitions

Back 24

A definition of a concept or variable in terms of precisely described operations, measures, or procedures.

Front 25

Converging operations

Back 25

Occurs when the results of several studies, each defining its terms with slightly different operational definitions, nonetheless converge on the same general conclusion.

Front 26

Serendipity

Back 26

The act of discovering something while looking for something else entirely.

Front 27

Construct

Back 27

A hypothetical factor (e.g. hunger) that cannot be observed directly but is inferred from certain behaviors (e.g. eating) and assumed to follow from certain circumstances (e.g. 24 hours without food).

Front 28

Deduction

Back 28

Reasoning from the general to the specific; in science, used when deriving research hypotheses from theories.

Front 29

Induction

Back 29

Reasoning from the specific to the general; in science, used when the results of specific research studies are used to support or refute a theory.

Front 30

Productivity

Back 30

With reference to theory, this refers to the amount of research that is generated to test a theory; theories that lead to a great deal of research are considered productive.

Front 31

Parsimonious

Back 31

Describing theory that includes the minimum number of constructs and assumptions in order to explain and predict some phenomenon adequately.

Front 32

Programs of research

Back 32

Series of interrelated studies in which the outcome of one study leads naturally to another.

Front 33

Measurement error

Back 33

Produced by any factor that introduces inaccuracies into the measurement of some variable.

Front 34

Face validity

Back 34

Occurs when a measure appears, to those taking a test, to be a reasonable measure of some trait; not considered by researchers to be an important indicator of validity.

Front 35

Criterion validity

Back 35

Form of validity in which a psychological measure is able to predict some future behavior or is meaningfully related to some other measure.

Front 36

Construct validity

Back 36

In measurement, it occurs when the measure being used accurately assesses some hypothetical construct; also refers to whether the construct itself is valid; in research, refers to whether the operational definitions used for independent and dependent variables are valid.

Front 37

Convergent validity

Back 37

Occurs when scores on a test designed to measure some construct (e.g. self-esteem) are correlated with scores on other tests that are theoretically related to the construct.

Front 38

Discriminant validity

Back 38

Occurs when scores on a test designed to measure some construct (e.g. self-esteem) are uncorrelated with scores on other tests that should be theoretically unrelated to the construct.