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Psyc1101 Week 2:
Critical Thinking pt 2
Jason Bell
March 6th
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Methods of Research contd.

Today’s lecture
• Experimental research: Examining cause and effect
• Manipulate, Measure, Control
• The independent variable
• The dependent variable

• Analysing and interpreting data

• Descriptive statistics
• Central tendency
• Variability
• Inferential statistics
• The t-test
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Experimental research

Experiments
• Researcher manipulates one or more variables

• Researcher measures whether this manipulation influences other

variables

• Researcher attempts to control extraneous factors that might

influence the outcome of the experiment
• .

• Independent variable (IV): the factor that is manipulated or controlled

by the experimenter
• Dependent variable (DV): the factor that is measured by the
experimenter
• May be influenced by the independent variable

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Experimental Research 1

IV = presence of phone

DV = time to brake

Participants randomly
Assigned a condition

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Experimental Research 1

Adding another IV to assess

context

2nd IV = traffic density

Same DV

Sometimes context can influence

the experimental outcome. This
Design was sensitive to that
Influence.
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Representing variability

What is the best way to describe our data?

Does all data look the same?
– Means, medians and modes

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Representing variability

Variability and the standard deviation

Greater variability = greater standard deviation (SD)

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Experimental research 2

Is the difference meaningful? Variability matters…

Red = people who don’t attend lectures
Blue = people who attend lectures

= better performance (not real data…)

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Experimental research 2

Inferential statistics
• Tell us how confident we can be in making inferences about a
population, based on the sample

Statistical significance
• Means that it is very unlikely that a given finding occurred by
chance
• Psychologists set chance at a result occurring 5 times out of 100,
or 5%.
• So the probability “p” of a result is written out as:
• p<.05 (the results is less likely than chance and therefore meaningful)
• p>.05 (the differences are likely due to chance)

Inferential statistics are the basis of psychological testing- though they

come in many forms
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Experimental research 2
Does lecture attendance matter?
• A t-test compares the performance of 200 students (100 in each
condition) across 3 years
3 components
• A value, representing the size of difference
• Degrees of freedom (df) = number of data samples –number of groups (2)
• Significance: p < or > .05
Simulated results
t(198) = 7.04, p<.05

t(198) = 3.56, p>.05

t(198) = 1.64, p>.05

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Experiment 3: putting that into practice

Lets do a little experiment in class to practice what we

learnt

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Experiment 3: putting that into practice

Hypothesis: girls have faster reaction times than boys

Let’s gather the evidence by conducting research

Boys first: when you see a green triangle clap your hands

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Here we go

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Boys (N = 300)

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Here we go

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Girls (N = 300)

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Together

Is the difference meaningful?

NO… t(598)= 3.41, p>.05

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Today in summary

Experiments allow us to address cause and effect

• Manipulate, measure and control
• We also need to be careful how we represent central
tendency

But to know if the difference is meaningful, or due to chance,

we need statistics
• We set chance at 5%
• The critical description then is p< or > .05

Statistics are the cornerstone of scientific investigation. They

allow us to add bricks, not straw, to the wall of knowledge. This
is important because the next scientific question uses those
foundations to formulate a hypothesis…
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The good news story

• In this section I hope you have learnt a little more about

the history of Psychology
• I hope you have learnt about methods of research in
Psychology
• I expect you to be able to apply this to real world
problems and debates
• The discussion of variability and inferential statistics are
also designed to facilitate your lab report write-up, so
refer back to these slides.

Next up, Andrew Page will teach you about theories of

learning.
Thankyou and goodnight 1