Research Methods

Experimental methods
An experiment looks at whether one thing with will affect another:
E.g:
Will drinking an energy drink help students get higher marks in a test?
So I want to know if the type of drink affect the test mark
However - I need to compare it to something else - so what should I do?
1 group of students get the energy drink, and the other group gets water,
and the marks are compared
Independent Variable & Dependent Variable
So we are predicting a cause and effect relationship
The cause is the independent variable (IV)
The effect is the dependent variable (DV)
In our previous experiment, what is the IV and what is the DV?
Independent variable - the type of drink - energy drink or water
Dependent variable - the mark achieved in the test
What is the IV and DV in each of the following?
Putting some participants in a warm room, and some in a cool room, and seeing
who has the quickest reaction time.
Measuring to see if students are happier in the autumn term or in the summer term
Asking older participants and younger participants to see if there is a difference in
attitudes to wearing face masks
Dressing up as either a police officer, or a street cleaner, and seeing who people
on the street are more likely to obey when asked to pick up a piece of litter
 Read!
● Laboratory, Field, Natural and Quasi Experiments
Lab, Field, Natural or Quasi Experiment - Which, and Why?

Putting some participants in a warm room, and some in a cool room, and seeing
who has the quickest reaction time.

Measuring to see if students are happier in the autumn term or in the summer term

Asking older participants and younger participants to see if there is a difference in

attitudes to wearing face masks

Dressing up as either a police officer, or a street cleaner, and seeing who people
on the street are more likely to obey when asked to pick up a piece of litter
 Find!
● A real piece of research for each of lab, field, natural
and quasi experiment
 Read!
● Experimental Design
Experimental design - how participants are divided up
Will drinking an energy drink help students get higher marks in a test?
3 ways of dividing participants:
Independent Measures: Participants are divided into 2 groups, 1 group drinks the
energy drink, and the other group drinks water, and both do the test. Results are
compared
● What’s the issue(s) with doing it this way?
Repeated Measures: All participants drink the energy drink and do the test, then later
drink water and do a similar test
● What’s the issue(s) now?
Matched Pairs: Each participant is matched with another participant with a similar IQ,
age etc, and for each pair one is put in 1 group, and 1 in the other. This is repeated for
all the other participants. Results are compared
 Lab, Field, Natural and Quasi
What’s the Experiment
difference between:
Independent measures, repeated
measures and matched pairs
Look at the following experiment:
The smoke-filled room

● What is the experimental method?

● What (if any) is and advantage and disadvantage of this method in this
experiment?
● What is the IV, and what is the DV?
● What is the experimental design?
● What is an advantage and disadvantage of this design in this
experiment?
● How might you improve this experiment?
Look at this experiment:
The still face

● What is the experimental method?

● What (if any) is and advantage and disadvantage of this method in this
experiment?
● What is the IV, and what is the DV?
● What is the experimental design?
● What is an advantage and disadvantage of this design in this
experiment?
● How might you improve this experiment?
Over to you:

Experimental method:
1. Lab experiment - The effect of colour on memory
2. Lab experiment - The effect of type of music on pulse rate
3. Natural experiment - The effect of time of day on reaction time
4. Natural experiment - The effects of time of day on mood
5. Quasi experiment - The effects of gender on mental rotation tasks
6. Quasi experiment - The effects of gender on recognising emotions
Over to you:
Your research:
● What did you do?
● How did you measure your variables?
● What materials did you use?
● What did you find? (Graphs / tables etc)
● What can you conclude / how can your findings be used?
● What are some of the weaknesses of your work?
Operationalisation
A researcher was concerned that students in this school were not getting enough
sleep, and that this was affecting their performance in class.
She therefore got a sample of 50 students, and each morning for a week, asked them
how many hours sleep they had had, putting them into 2 groups – less than 7 hours
sleep, and more than 7 hours sleep.
She then gave them a reaction time test, where they had to strike the space bar on the
computer when a red light came on. Their reaction time was measured in seconds.
•What is the IV in this study?
•What is the DV?
•How is the DV measured?
Operationalisation

The same researcher was concerned that sleep was

affecting happiness. She therefore decided to measure
how happy students were, and see if this was connected
with the amount of sleep they were getting.
•What is the IV in this study?
•What is the DV?
•How might the DV be measured?
Operationalisation

Definition:
•To operationalise a variable is to put it into a form that
can be clearly measured
How did these psychologists operationalise their variables?
•Asch – conformity
•Milgram – obedience
•Loftus and Palmer – leading questions
•Peterson and Peterson – duration of STM
 Operationalisation
Look at the following – for each decide how you would design the study (experimental
method / experimental design / IV & DV), ensuring that you fully operationalise your
variables:
● To investigate if memory is associated with the amount of alcohol consumed
on average per week
● To investigate if boys or girls are more likely to show aggressive behaviour
after playing a violent computer game
● To investigate whether people more relaxed on a warm day, or on a cold day
● To investigate whether psychology students are more creative than maths
students
● To investigate if passengers are ruder on the tube, than they are on the bus
● To investigate if real exams create more anxiety than mock exams
Control
I want to see if drinking coffee achieves a higher exam mark for
students.
•I therefore get a group of students to drink a double espresso
before their maths exam one afternoon.
•The following day I get them to drink water before another maths
exam that morning.
The mean mark for their maths exam on day 1 was 85%, and their
mean mark for their exam on the second day was 75%. I therefore
declare my research a success.
Am I correct to do this?
Control

Control:
•Ensuring that it is only the IV that affects the DV.
Anything else which affects the DV will make my research
invalid
Recap:
● What does ‘operationalisation’ in research mean?
● I wonder if students are happier in the morning than in the afternoon, so ask
them to rate their level of happiness out of 10 each morning, and each
afternoon, for a week. What is the operationalised dependent variable in
this study?
● What do I mean by ‘control’ in research?
● I notice that students got a better mark in a test on Monday morning, than on
Friday afternoon, leading me to believe that all tests should be sat in the
morning. Am I correct?
Threats to control
The threat to the control in the following experiment is an extraneous
variable. See if you can spot what the extraneous variable is, and if you can
then define what an extraneous variable is:

Researchers wanted to see if two maths exams were the same in

difficulty, so got a maths class to sit the first on one day, and the second
the next day, and compared their marks. However, on the second day the
air conditioning wasn’t working, and students complained that the room
was hot and stuffy.
Extraneous variables:
• Any variable other than the IV which may have an effect on the DV if it is
not controlled
Threats to control
The threat to the control in the following experiment is a demand
characteristic. See if you can spot what the problem is, and if you can then
define what a demand characteristic is:

Students sat a memory test in a brightly lit room, and in a darker room. As
some of the students were psychology students, they had seen previous
research which suggested that memory was better in brightly lit rooms.
The results to this experiment did indeed show the same thing.
Demand characteristics:
• Any cue which may reveal the purpose of the experiment, leading the
participants to change their behaviour – normally to try and please the
researcher
Threats to control
The threat to the control in the following experiment is an investigator
effect. See if you can spot what the problem is, and if you can then
define what an investigator effect is:

A research was interested to see if caffeine made people more chatty.

She therefore gave some participants a highly caffeinated drink, and
others just water, and then asked them several questions, timing how
long they spoke for in their responses. Some participants talked a lot
and it made her smile.
Investigator effects:
• Any effect of the researcher’s behaviour on the research outcome
Threats to control
The threat to the control in the following experiment is a lack of randomisation.
See if you can spot what the problem is, and if you can then define what
randomisation is:

A researcher was testing word recall, depending on whether the words were
organised into meaningful categories, or whether they were not. She created a
list of words for the categories, putting the shorter words towards the start of
each category and the longer towards the end. She decided that participants
would do the ‘meaningful categories’ condition first, and the other second.
Randomisation:
• Using chance when designing the order of tasks within a condition, and the
order the conditions are performed
Threats to control
The threat to the control in the following experiment is a lack of
standardisation. See if you can spot what the problem is, and if you can
then define what standardisation is:

In the previous study on the effects of brightly lit rooms, or a darker

room on memory, the researcher used one room for the brightly lit
condition, and a smaller room nearby which had curtains to create the
desired effect, for the darker condition.
Standardisation:
• Ensuring that all procedures and the environment are the same for all
participants, apart from the IV
Control:
What do we mean by ‘control’ in scientific research?
Poor control could make our results not ‘valid’. What does this term
mean?
What are the following threats to control?
• Extraneous variables
• Demand characteristics
• Investigator effects
• Randomisation
• Standardisation
Threats to control:
Extraneous variables:
• Any variable other than the IV which may have an effect on the DV if it is not controlled
Demand characteristics:
• Any cue from the researcher which may reveal the purpose of the experiment, leading
the participants to change their behaviour
Investigator effects:
• Any effect of the researcher’s behaviour on the research outcome
Randomisation:
• Using chance when designing the order of tasks within a condition, and the order the
conditions are performed
Standardisation:
• Ensuring that all procedures and the environment are the same for all participants,
apart from the IV
What issues are there with control here?
• Demand characteristics
• Investigator effects
• Randomisation
• Standardisation
• Extraneous variables
A researcher wanted to test the effects of temperature on
memory, believing that warm temperatures would improve
memory recall. She therefore created 2 lists of words, and
decided that one list would be learnt by participants in a cool
room, and then the following day they would learn the other list
of words in a warm room. She chose 20 words for her first list,
and 20 for her second, putting all the shorter words to the start
of each list, and the longer ones towards the end. She chose 20
students from her class, and on the first day she decided they
would all do the test in the cool room, and on the next, in the
warm room. She used 2 different rooms. Running the
experiment herself, she welcomed the students each day, and
told them what they had to do, mentioning that she was
replicating some earlier research on warmth improving
memory.
Asch
• Demand characteristics
• Investigator effects
• Randomisation
• Standardisation
• Extraneous variables

Remember - there was a

control condition where the
confederates gave only
correct responses
Aim
Aim:
• An aim is a general statement of what the researcher intends to investigate,
highlighting the purpose of the study.
An example:
• I'm interested to see if musicians play a piece of music they believe has been
composed by a famous musician better, than if they believe it has been composed by
someone who is not famous

Aim: To investigate whether...

...how well a musician plays a piece of music is affected by who they believed
composed it
Aim

I want to investigate whether revising in the morning before a test gets better
results than revising in the evening. I suspect there is a difference, but I’m not sure
what it is.

I suspect that one of the reasons for aggressive behaviour is overcrowding, as previous
research has shown this. I decide to investigate this with an observational study, where I
will observe the number of aggressive acts in a nightclub on a Saturday night when it is
very busy, and on a Friday night when it is less busy.

What was the aim of the study you conducted over the holidays?
Hypotheses

Hypothesis:
• A precise, testable statement about the expected outcome of a piece of research
Previous example: I'm interested to see if musicians play a piece of music they believe has
been composed by a famous musician, they will play it better than if they believe it
has been composed by someone who is not famous
My prediction (in normal English): I think musicians will play better if they believe the
composition is by a famous composer
Hypothesis:
• Musicians who believe a piece of music has been composed by a famous musician
will play better than musicians who do not believe that the piece of music has been
composed by a famous musician.
Hypotheses

Aim: to investigate whether regular exercise will affect the number of illnesses a
person will have
Hypothesis: Participants who take regular exercise will have a lower number of
illnesses than participants who do not take regular exercise
Aim: to investigate whether noise has an effect on how well students perform in
an exam
Hypothesis: Students who perform an exam in a noisy room will achieve lower
marks than those who perform an exam in a quiet room
Aim: to investigate the effects of weather on how helpful people are to each other
Hypothesis: On a sunny day, participants will be more helpful than on a rainy day
 Hypotheses – directional and non-directional
Returning to our musicians:
Aim: To investigate whether musicians play better if they believe the composition is by a famous composer.
If believing a composer is famous does have an effect, there are 2 possibilities:
• They will play better
• They will play worse
Musicians who believe a piece of music has been composed by a famous musician will play better than
musicians who do not believe that the piece of music has been composed by a famous musician.
Musicians who believe a piece of music has been composed by a famous musician will play worse than
musicians who do not believe that the piece of music has been composed by a famous musician.
However - What if I believe it will have an effect, but I don’t know what that affect will be?
There will be a difference in…
…how well musicians play a piece of music, depending on whether they believe it has been composed by a
famous musician, or not.
Directional hypotheses are used when there has been previous research which suggests what to expect
Change to a non-directional hypothesis

Hypothesis: Participants who take regular exercise will have a lower number of
illnesses than participants who do not take regular exercise

Hypothesis: Students who perform an exam in a noisy room will achieve lower
marks than those who perform an exam in a quiet room

Hypothesis: On a sunny day, participants will be more helpful than on a rainy day

And for your study?

Sampling
Sampling Methods
Make notes to explain each of the following. Do not evaluate them yet:
•Random sample
•Opportunity sample
•Volunteer sample
•Systematic sample
•Stratified sample
Target Population:
All the coloured slips in your bag are your target population. Let’s
imagine each colour represents a different age group. Record the
number and percentage of each colour you have:

Colour Number %

Red

Pink

Green

Orange

Cream
 Measures of Central Tendency

Table to show the time taken to do a word search task after either drinking water, or after
drinking a caffeinated drink
Partici-
pant
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Water
(s) 12 15 14 11 15 17 9 13 12 10
Caff-
Eine 10 15 12 13 16 10 8 14 10 9
(s)

What is the issue if I only display my data this way?

 Measures of Central Tendency

• There are 3 measure of central tendency you need to know. How do you
calculate each of them?

• Mean
• Median
• Mode
 Measures of Central Tendency
Table to show time (seconds) taken to do a word search task after
drinking either coffee or water:
Participant 1 2 3 4 5

Coffee 1 2 3 4 5

Water 1 2 3 4 25

What are the means for each condition?

What limitation of the mean does this reveal?
 Measures of Central Tendency
Table to show time (seconds) taken to do a word search task after
drinking either coffee or water:
Participant 1 2 3 4 5

Coffee 1 2 3 24 25

Water 1 2 23 24 25

What are the medians for each condition?

What limitation of the median does this reveal?
 Measures of Central Tendency

Table to show pets owned by participants

Pet: Dog Cat Rabbit

Number 15 9 3
:
1. What is the only measure of central tendency that can be used here?
 Measures of Central Tendency
The mean:
Strength: It is the most sensitive measure of central tendency,
as all values contribute in its calculation
Weakness: It can be affected by outliers, which can artificially
inflate or deflate its value, making it unrepresentative
The median:
Strength: It is not affected by outliers
Weakness: It can be changed dramatically by changes in the
middle of a data set, making it unrepresentative
The mode:
Strength: It is sometimes the only measure that can be used, if
the data set is arranged in categories
Weakness: It is the least sensitive measure, as only the most
frequent category gets reported
 Measures of Dispersion

The Range:
• The spread of scores in a set of data calculated by subtracting the lowest
score from the highest
Participant​ 1​ 2​ 3​ 4​ 5​

Water​ 5 9​ 10​ 13​ 15

Caffeine​ 5 8 11 13​ 25

1. What are the ranges for each of the conditions?

2. What limitation of using the range does this reveal?
 Measures of Dispersion

The Standard Deviation:

• This tells us how far the data varies around the mean. The higher the score, the
further it is dispersed from the mean.
 Describing Data

• The mean number of obstacles hit when answering questions was 7.3, whilst in silence, was 5.3.
• This shows that, on average, participants hit more objects when talking, suggesting that this was
a distraction to them so their driving became worse.
• However, the standard deviation for the conversation condition, at 4.7, was larger than for the
silence condition at 1.2.
• This suggests that the results in the conversation condition were more dispersed around the
mean than in the other condition.
• So conversation had a more varied effect on some participants that others, i.e. it led to some
hitting a lot more objects, and some hitting a lot less.
Additional point: if the values are very similar, report this. E.g. ‘the standard deviations for both
conditions are very similar, suggesting that the spread of data for each is also very similar,
although condition1 has a slightly greater spread’
 Graphical Displays of Data
• Bar charts
• Scattergrams
• Histograms
• Line graphs

What are each of the above?

What is the difference between them?
Think about how each looks,
but also what kind of study and data
we would use each for.
 Which type of display? Title (axis and overall)?

• A researcher wanted to know if there was a correlation between the

temperature measured in degrees, and the minutes late that students
arrived in school.
• A researcher wanted to know if revising for a test the evening before,
would get a higher mark than revising on the morning of the test.
• A researcher wanted to know if the enthusiasm of students, measured by
how often they put up their hands in class, would decline over the 5 days
from Monday to Friday.
• A researcher wanted to know if income had an effect on happiness. They
therefore measured the happiness levels of people in different income
groups (0-10K, 10-20k, 20-30k etc)
Briefly describe the study
(Do not read from the card)

What issues were broken?

How could they have made

it more ethical?

Even if more ethical, should

it be done?