The experimental method

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  • Created by: Tahalia
  • Created on: 23-01-20 20:01
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  • The Experimental Method
    • Ethical Issues
      • Never use anyone under the age of 16 as a participant (or anyone hat is described as vulnerable in any way)
      • Always obtain informed consent from all participants, telling them what they will be expected to do and allowing them to refuse to take part
      • Debrief your participants after the study, informing them of any deception and allowing them to withdraw their data is they wish so after reflection.
    • About Experiments
      • What will you measure?
        • This is called the dependent variable (DV)
          • When you have decided what exactly what you would measure, you have operationalised the DV.
            • You have to make sure that all the participants are actually doing the same work and would have specified what that task was (Such as a memory test).
      • What are your 2 conditions?
        • This is called the independent variable.
          • There are often two conditions of the IV
            • In this case it's either the TV is on or off.
              • We need to compare both conditions(different levels of the IV)
      • What will you expect to find?
        • This is your hypothesis, a statement of what you believe to be true i.e STUDENTS WHO DO A MEMORY TASK WITH THE TV ON PRODUCE WORK WHICH GETS FEWER MARKS.
          • This is different to the aims of an experiment, which would be to investigate the effect of TV on the work a student produces.
            • Aims are intentions or possibly a research question.
      • What will the participants do?
        • You have worked out a standardised procedure
          • It is important that each group does the same task in each condition
            • Otherwise the results may vary because of changes in procedure, not changes in the IV.
      • What do you need to control?
        • You work out a set of standardized procedures
          • You have tried to control some extraneous variables.
            • Such as time of day
    • RESEARCH AIM EXAMPLE:  To investigate whether people do work just as well with the TV on, or will their work suffer as a result.

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