Study Guide of: Edwin K Raeven Abellar

Course: BS Psychology
Subject: Experimental Psychology

1. Describe each of these none experimental approaches and give an example of how each might be used:
A. Phenomenology
- Takes the persons immediate experience and relies on personal experiences as a source of data,
this technique does not also compare behaviors of different type of treatment.
B. Case Study
- Research technique where antecedent conditions are not altered, it is a study about a person’s
experience or behavior. Case studies are also one of the main source of hypothesis, inference
and theories which can help determine different problems and create different approaches to
solve or prevent the problem.
C. Field Study
- A non-experimental approached used in the field or in real life setting. This is more on the
observational and recording side while keeping an unobtrusive techniques.
D. Qualitative research
- A research where they more rely on words mostly focuses on narratives, self-reports, expression of
ideas, memories, feeling and thoughts of a person. It is used to study phenomena that are contextual,
meaning they cannot be understood without the context in which they appear.

2. What is meant by external validity? Why are none experimental studies often higher in experimental
validity than true experiments?
- Generalizability or applicability to people and situations outside the research setting. Which means
universal and can be used or easily understand by those who are not in the same field of the specific
study.

3. What is meant by internal validity? Why are none experimental studies often lower internal validity?
- The degree to which a research design allows us to make casual statements. It is also the extent to which
you’re able to say that no other variables, apart from the independent variable, caused a change in the
dependent variable.

4. What is retrospective data considered a shortcoming in scientific research?

- Data collected in the present that are based on recollection of past events. Retrospective data can be
easily biased by the situation in which data is collected this is due to the fact that a person cannot recall
past memories in perfect detail and can be easily altered by the brain processes.

5. Why are unobtrusive measured referred?

- Observational technique where the researcher does not alter how the data is collected and how it
happens.

6. Devise an unobtrusive measure to establish each of the following

A. Which professor at the university is the most popular?
- Observe students activities, performance, and activeness in different class and see which professor has
the most active class to determine why he’s famous and how famous he is.
 B. What are the most popular library books?
- Check time stamps of returned and borrowed book or observe in the library what specific books are
being taken a lot more often.

C. Do people prefer to sit on the left side of the theater when they go to the movies?
- Watching early movie releases means more persons is gonna come, this means that observation to who
and how many will stay at the side lines of the theater can be measures while being unobtrusive.

D. How will people vote on the next school tax?

- I don’t understand what a school tax sir.

7. For each of the research topics listed here, indicate the type of none experimental approach that would be
useful and explain why.(you may find more than one approach potentially used for some topics.)
A. Pushing ahead in line
- In this topic ill use field study, pushing ahead inline mostly happens in rush hour so joining them in that
time can be useful to asses why people push ahead in line.

B. Day dreaming
- Case study will be used in this topic, due to the fact that large amount and in different times day
dreaming happens, the researcher can ask question or just observe a person day dreaming.

C. Locating the most popular painting in an art gallery.

- Field study will be used in this one, because observing people around a gallery can be an easy way
possible because persons tend to stop on a certain picture if it caught there attention.

D. Studiousness in college students.

E. Determining whether a particular patient has improved with psychotherapy.

- Qualitative research will be used in these research, due to the fact that this topic requires long term
observation and uses time to see differences.

8. For each of your answer to question no. 7, explain whether an experiment would generate more useful
information than the non-experimental method you selected. Would it be possible to set up experiments to
explore all these problems?
a. Pushing ahead in line - this topic does not need to have experimental research due to the fact that you
are only looking for why push ahead of the line than staying in line.
b. Day dreaming - this topic can be given with experimental design to understand differences in day
dreaming and how is day dreaming affected, does external factor affect it or its all internal factor.
c. Locating most popular painting – this topic can also be given an experimental design to determine what
kind of design or genre some of this people like and what is the difference and the similarities of each
person’s likes.
d. Studiousness in college students.
e. Determining whether a particular patient has improved with psychotherapy. – this topic can also be
given an experimental design so that we can have a more detailed analysis of the persons improvements
and how we could alter the techniques so that we can do it better for others.

9. What is the current paradigm in psychological science? What is meant by paradigm shift?
 - The current paradigm in psychology is hypothesis testing, experimentation, and quantitative data
analysis constitute the accepted paradigm within contemporary psychology. Paradigm shift is a change
of thinking or a change on how the work is done.

10. Design a qualitative study to explore sibling rivalry. Use a method from empirical phenomenology as your
data-gathering technique.