Conduct a Psychology Experiment DR MD. INTEKHAB-UR-RAHMAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY B.N.MANDAL UNIVERSITY MADHEPURA-BIHAR INDIA, PIN-852113
Transcript
1. Conduct a PsychologyExperiment DR MD. INTEKHAB-UR-RAHMAN
UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY B.N.MANDAL UNIVERSITY
MADHEPURA-BIHAR INDIA, PIN-852113
2. GettingStarted Image courtesy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saphirai/ Next
3. Do you need to perform anexperiment for your
psychologyclass? Dont panic! Learn more about ten of the steps you
should follow in order to successfully complete a psychology
experiment. Next
4. Conducting your first psychology experiment can be a long,
complicated, and intimidating process. It can be especially
confusing if you are not quite sure where to begin or which steps
to take. Like other sciences, psychology utilizes the scientific
method and bases conclusions upon empirical evidence. When
conducting an experiment, it is important to follow the five basic
steps of the scientific method: Next
5. Scientific methods1. Ask a question that can be tested
Next
6. 2. Design a study and collect data Next
7. 3. Analyze results and reach conclusions Next
8. 4. Share the results with the scientific community Next
9. 5. Replicate the results Next
10. These five steps serve as a general outline of the entire
process. Continue to get moredetails the ten steps you should
follow while conducting your psychology experiment. Next
11. Step 1: Find a Problem or
12. Find a Research Problem orQuestion / Image courtesy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cayusa
13. The first step in your psychology experiment is to come up
with a research question or problem. Learn more below about some of
the places to look for ideas for your psychology experimen .
14. Picking a research problem can be one of the most
challenging steps. After all, there are so many different topics
you might choose to investigate. Stumped for an idea? Consider some
of the following:
15. Investigate a commonly held belief. . Folk psychology is a
good source of unanswered questions that can serve as the basis for
psychological research. Forexample, many people believe that
staying up all night to cram for a big exam canactually hurt test
performance. You couldconduct a study in which you compare the test
scores of students who stayed up all night studying, versus the
scores of students who got a full nights sleep prior to the
exam.
16. Review psychology literature.. Published studies are a
greatsource of unanswered research questions. In many cases,
theauthors will even note the need for further research. Find a
published study that you find intriguing, and then come up with
some questions that require further exploration.
17. Think about everyday problems. . There are many practical
applications for psychology research. Explore various problemsthat
you or others face each day, and then consider how you could
research potential solutions. For example, you might investigate
different memorization strategies to determine which methods are
most effective.
18. Step 2: Define Your Vari . Operationally Define
YourVariables Image courtesy Craig Jewell
19. Before you begin your psychology experiment, it is
essential to operationally define all of your variables.
20. VariablesVariables are anything that might impact the
outcome of your study. An operational definition describes exactly
what the variables are and how they are measured within the context
of your study. For example, if you were doing a study on the impact
of sleep deprivation on driving performance, you would need to
operationally define what you mean by sleep deprivation and driving
performance.
21. In this example you might define sleep deprivation as
getting less than seven hours of sleep at night and define driving
performance as how well a participant does on a driving test.
22. What is the purpose of operationally defining variables?
The main purpose iscontrol. By understanding what your are
measuring, you can control for it by holding thevariable constant
between all ofthe groups or manipulating it as an independent
variable.
23. Step 3: Develop a Hypot
24. Develop aHypothesisThe next step in conducting your
psychology experiment is to develop a testable hypothesis. Image
courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/phae/
25. The next step is to develop a testable hypothesis that
predicts how the operationally defined variables are related. In
our example in the previous step, our hypothesis might be:
"Students who are sleep deprived will perform worse than students
who are not sleep deprived on a test of driving performance."
26. In order to determine if the results of the study are
significant, it is essential to also have a null hypothesis. The
null hypothesis is the prediction that one variable will have no
association to the other variable. In other words, the null
hypothesis assumes that there will be no difference in the effects
of the two treatments in our experimental and control groups.
27. The null hypothesis is assumed to be valid unless
contradicted by the results. The experimenters can either reject
the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative hypothesis or not
reject the null hypothesis.
28. It is important to remember that not rejecting the null
hypothesis does not mean that you are accepting the null
hypothesis. To say that you are accepting the null hypothesis is to
suggest that something is true simply because you did not find any
evidence against it. This represents a logical fallacy that should
be avoided in scientific research.
31. Before you start your psychology experiment, you need to
review the previously existing literature on your topic.
32. Once you have developed a testable hypothesis, it is
important to spend some time doing some background research. What
do researchersalready know about your topic? What questions remain
unanswered? Youcan learn about previous research on your topic by
exploring books, journal articles, online databases, newspapers,
and websites devoted to your subject.
33. Reasons to conductbackground research:
34. Reading previous research helps you gain a
betterunderstanding of what you will encounter during your own
experiment.
35. Understanding the background of your topic provides a
better basis for your own hypothesis. After conducting a thorough
review of the literature, you might choose to alter your own
hypothesis.
36. Background research alsoallows you to explain why you chose
to investigate your particular hypothesis andarticulate why the
topic merits further exploration.
37. As you research the history of your topic, remember to take
careful notes and create a working bibliography of your sources.
This information willbe valuable when you begin to write up your
experiment results.
40. Learn more about three of the basicexperimental designs you
might use when conducting your psychology experiment. After
conducting background research and finalizing yourhypothesis, your
next step is todevelop an experimental design. There are three
basic types of designs that you might utilize.Each has its own
strengths and weaknesses.
41. Pre-Experimental DesignsPre-Experimental Designs: This type
of experimental design does not include a control group. A single
group of participants is studied, and there is no comparison
between a treatment group and a control group. Examples of pre-
experimental designs include case studies (one group is given a
treatment and the results are measured) and pre-test/post- test
studies (one group is tested, given a treatment and then
retested).
42. Quasi-Experimental DesignsQuasi-Experimental Designs: This
type of experimental design does include a control group, but the
design does not include randomization.
43. True Experimental DesignsTrue Experimental Designs: A true
experimental design include both of the elements that the
pre-experimental designs and quasi-experimental designs lack on
their own - control groups and random assignment to groups.
44. Step 6: Standardize You
45. 6. Standardize YourProceduresStandardizing your procedures
helps ensure that the things thatyou are comparing are equivalent.
Morganlane Productions/iStockPhoto
46. In order to arrive at legitimate conclusions, it is
essential to compare apples to apples. Each participant in each
group must receive the same treatment under the same conditions.
For example, in our hypothetical study on the effects of sleep
deprivation on driving performance, the driving test must be
administered to each participant in the same way. The driving
course must be the same, the obstacles faced must be the same, and
the time given must be the same.
47. Step 7: Choose Your Par
48. 7. ChooseYourParticipants When conducting your experiment,
you do not need to test every individual in a group. Instead, you
can select a random sample of participants from the larger
population. courtesy Michal Zacharzewski
49. Image In addition to making sure that the testing
conditions are standardized, it is also essential to ensure that
your pool of participants is the same. If the individuals in your
control group (those who are not sleep deprived) all happen to be
amateur race car drivers while your experimental group (those that
are sleep deprived) are all people who just recently earned their
drivers licenses, your experiment will lack standardization.
50. When choosing subjects, there are a number of different
techniques you can use. A simple random sample involves randomly
selecting a number of participants from a group. A stratified
random sample requires randomly selecting participants from
different subsets of the population. These subsets might include
characteristics such as geographic location, age, sex, race, or
socioeconomic status.
51. Step 8: Perform Tests an
52. 8. Conduct Tests and CollectDataAfter carefully designing
your study, now is the time to actuallyconduct the experiment.
Administer your testing procedures and thencollect the data from
the participants. Image courtesy Rich Legg/iStockPhoto
53. After you have selected participants, the next steps are to
conduct your tests andcollect the data. Prior to doing any testing,
however, there are a few importantconcerns that need to be
addressed. First, you need to be sure that your testingprocedures
are ethical. Generally, you will need to gain permission to conduct
anytype of testing with human participants by submitting the
details of your experiment to your schools Institutional Review
Board, sometimes referred to as the Human Subjects Committee.
54. After you have gained approval from your academic
institutions IRB, you will need to present informed consent forms
to each of your participants. This form offers information on the
study, the data that will be gathered, and how the results will be
used. The form also gives participants the option towithdraw from
the study at any point in time.
55. Once this step has been completed, you can begin
administering your testingprocedures and collecting the data.
56. Step 9: Analyze the Resu
57. 9. Analyze theResultsThe next step is to analyze the data
that you collected during yourpsychology experiment. Image courtesy
Sanja Gjenero
58. After collecting your data, it is time to analyze the
results of your experiment. Researchers utilize statistics to
determine if the results of the study support the original
hypothesis and to determine if the results are statistically
significant. Statistical significance means that the results of the
study are unlikely to have occurred simply by chance.
59. The types of statistical methods you use to analyze your
data depend largely on the type of data that you collected. If you
are using a random sample of a larger population, you will need to
utilize inferential statistics. These statistical methods make
inferences about how the results relate to the population at large.
Because you are making inferences based upon a sample, it has to be
assumed that there will be a certain margin of error.
60. Step 10: Share Your Res
61. 10. Write Up and Share YourResultsThe final step in
conducting your psychology experiment is tocommunicate your
results. Learn more about the structure of apsychology paper and
find tips for writing each section. Image courtesy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheatfields/
62. Your final task in conducting a psychology experiment is to
communicate your results. By sharing your experiment with the
scientific community, you arecontributing to the knowledge base on
that particular topic. One of the most common ways to share
research results is to publish the study in a peer-reviewed
professional journal. Other methods include sharing results at
conferences, in book chapters, or in academic presentations.
63. In your case, it is likely that your class instructor will
expect a formal write-up of your experiment in the same format
required in a professional journal article or lab report:
64. Title Page Abstract Introduction Method Results Discussion
References Tables and Figures