Course Business Writing Assignment 1 should be turned

Course Business �Writing Assignment #1 should be turned in �Course Contracts due Wednesday 1/25/12 �Readings for Wednesday 1/25/12 Ch. 3 (pg. 104 -113 & 120 -127) �Review the Research Participation Requirements packet on website under the “Syllabus” tab

Research Methodology DAY 2

Experiments �Experiment: testing causality by measuring and manipulating variables Independent variable (IV): manipulated Dependent variable (DV): measured

Experiments �Control group: participants/subjects who do not receive the intervention being studied �Experimental group: participants/subjects who do receive the intervention being studied

Selecting Participants �Population: the group you want to know about �Sample: the subset of people in the actual study

• In random assignment, each potential participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any level of the IV. • Selection bias: participants in different groups of an experiment differ systematically Psychological Science; p. 47

Data Collection Observation Case Studies �Must be defined clearly �Intensive examinations and collected systematically �Reactivity: being watched changes behavior of individual lives and organizations �Useful for examining unusual occurrences �Interpretation can be subjective The Hawthorne Effect

Data Collection Asking Response Performance �Surveys, �Quantifying perceptual questionnaires, and interviews directly ask people about their thoughts and behaviors �Self-report bias Social desirability or cognitive processes in response to a stimulus Reaction times Response accuracy Stimulus judgments �Less likely to be useful in real-world settings, costly, and time consuming

Data Collection Measuring Brain Activity Animal Models � Electrophysiology �Provides simpler Measures the brain’s electrical activity (EEG) � Brain Imaging Measures changes in rate of blood flow � � � Positron emission tomography (PET) Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (f. MRI) � Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) Disrupts normal brain activity, allowing researchers to infer the brain processing in particular thoughts, feelings, and behaviors models of behavior and genetics �Purpose is to learn about animals’ behavior or to make inferences about human behavior

Research Ethics �Nuremburg Trials Nuremburg Code (1947) �Tuskegee Syphilis Study/Nuremberg Code The Belmont Report � Respect for persons � Beneficence � Justice �Institutional Review Boards (IRB)

Analyzing Data �Data must be meaningful (valid) and its measurement reliable (i. e. consistent and stable) and accurate (free from error).

Descriptive Statistics Provide a Summary of the Data �Measures of central tendency (e. g. mean, median, and mode) indicate statistical averages across sets of numbers �Measures of variability (e. g. standard deviation) indicate how widely numbers are distributed about an average

Correlations �Correlations describe the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!!!