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Research methods
infoWhy this? Research methods enable us to understand how psychological claims are generated, tested, and challenged. Designing ethical investigations, interpreting data, and judging reliability and validity help us distinguish evidence-based explanations of behaviour from unsupported claims.
scheduleWhy now? Beginning with this unit establishes the terminology and scientific reasoning needed to evaluate theories and studies throughout the course. Memory then provides an immediate context for applying ideas about variables, experimental design, and the interpretation of results.
neurologyYou need to know
- How to formulate null and alternative hypotheses
- Different types of variables – independent, dependent and extraneous
- Quantitative and qualitative methods
- Primary and secondary data
- Sampling methods – random, opportunity, systematic and stratified
- Experimental methods and experimental designs
- Correlations and the use of scatter diagrams to show relationships between variables
- Research procedures
- Ethical issues in psychological research and ways to deal with them
- Descriptive statistics – mean, median, mode and range.
rocket_launchYou must be able to
- Demonstrate knowledge of research methods, experimental designs and data handling techniques
- Apply research methods to scenarios, selecting and justifying appropriate methods, designs, sampling techniques and procedures
- Analyse and evaluate psychological investigations, considering reliability, validity, ethics and strengths and weaknesses.
- Calculate and interpret descriptive statistics, perform basic numeric calculations and interpret tables, graphs and scatter diagrams
Revision Quiz
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Congratulations! You have completed the quiz.