Announcements
• Reminder: exam #1 a week from today
• Need to check with me regarding clinical
paper topic. Deadline Oct. 3rd
• Upcoming assignment: parent interview.
See handout.
Research Methods
Types of Investigations
1. Naturalistic or Observational Studies
•
(correlational studies; studies with quasiexperimental designs)
A. Characteristics of correlational studies
B. Relationships/Causality
e.g. Harvard students/SAT
e.g. TV watching and aggression in children (see
next slide)
TV and aggression
• Headlines:
“TV Time Yields Violence” (The Boston Globe)
“Just an hour of TV time a day leads to
violence” (Reuters)
Relationships/Causality
•
Three ways that relationships can work:
1. TV causes aggression
2. Aggression causes TV watching
(e.g. no friends, time to kill)
3. Third variable causes them both
Example: health of babies born to smoking and
nonsmoking parents
Classic Experimental Studies
Need to meet two conditions:
1. Random assignment to groups
2. Experimental control
Steps to design an experimental study
1. Operationalize independent and dependent
variables
2. Randomly assign participants to groups
Classic Experimental Studies
Conclusions/limitations:
1. Greatest strength is causality
2. Main problem is inability to use random
assignment
3. generalizability
Single Subject Design
(Case studies and within subject designs)
1. Case studies
•
•
Used to figure out what might be important
Used when situation or disorder is very rare
2. Single subject designs
•
•
Used to assess change in behavior related
to an intervention
A – B – A –B design
Time Frame of Studies
1. Cross sectional research
•
Cheaper, easier but can’t look at change over
time
2. Prospective longitudinal design
•
Capture developmental processes but timeconsuming
3. Accelerated longitudinal design
•
Cohort sequential design
Pedro-Carroll & Cowan divorce
intervention study
Intro.:
• Establishes importance of research
• Reviews prior research
• Highlights gaps, builds
Didn’t address developmental impact of divorce
Doesn’t address divorce vs. prior conditions
Why chose particular areas??
Divorce intervention study cont’
Methods:
strengths:
1. Low dropout rate
2. Control group and random assignment
3. Range of sources of info./measurements
weaknesses:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Expectancy effects
Variability in post divorce time
No attention control group – reactivity?
No info. on measures used
Review for exam
Know everything
• Developmental psychopathology model
• Risk/resilience/protective factors
• Several questions on research methods and
interpretation of findings
– Be able to design a study
– Be able to interpret results from each method (what
can you know and not)
• Divorce article and discussion in class
• Importance of development in child
psychopathology