Research Methods Year 1
Year 1 Prep work
You covered the following topics at the start of the year so the following preps are for recapping these topics.
The following preps are on the Research Methods topics you have yet to study:
Watch the tutorial video below to help with Correlation Prep!
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The design a study booklet has an exam style question for each research method.
Each question has been designed to give you guidance on how an answer should be written. Some of these questions will be set throughout the course. |
Topic areas within Research Methods
Operationalised variables
A well written hypothesis should:
* Make it easy to tell what the IV and DV are.
* Be obvious how each of the variables has been 'operationalised' in order to make the hypothesis clear and testable.
So what do we mean by operationalised?
Well, many of the subject matter Psychologists are interested in are often quite fuzzy and not easy to define e.g. intelligence, thinking, social behaviour.
Therefore, researchers must try and make sure we use PRECISE TERMS for how we will MEASURE/MANIPULATE the variables.
Let's look an example:
Here is a hypothesis that has not been operationalised:
People work significantly better in quiet conditions rather than noisy conditions.
To operationalise it, we need to complete the following steps:
1. Decide how we will manipulate the IV - ‘quiet’ or ‘noisy’
Quiet= no sound in a room, Noisy=music playing in a room
2. Decide how we will measure the DV- a person has ‘worked better’
‘Work better’= obtain a higher score on a memory test of 20 unrelated words in a random list.
Now here is a new and improved operationalised hypothesis:
People obtain a significantly higher score out of 20 on a memory test of a list of unrelated words when tested in a quiet room (no sound) rather than a noisy room (radio playing).
A well written hypothesis should:
* Make it easy to tell what the IV and DV are.
* Be obvious how each of the variables has been 'operationalised' in order to make the hypothesis clear and testable.
So what do we mean by operationalised?
Well, many of the subject matter Psychologists are interested in are often quite fuzzy and not easy to define e.g. intelligence, thinking, social behaviour.
Therefore, researchers must try and make sure we use PRECISE TERMS for how we will MEASURE/MANIPULATE the variables.
Let's look an example:
Here is a hypothesis that has not been operationalised:
People work significantly better in quiet conditions rather than noisy conditions.
To operationalise it, we need to complete the following steps:
1. Decide how we will manipulate the IV - ‘quiet’ or ‘noisy’
Quiet= no sound in a room, Noisy=music playing in a room
2. Decide how we will measure the DV- a person has ‘worked better’
‘Work better’= obtain a higher score on a memory test of 20 unrelated words in a random list.
Now here is a new and improved operationalised hypothesis:
People obtain a significantly higher score out of 20 on a memory test of a list of unrelated words when tested in a quiet room (no sound) rather than a noisy room (radio playing).