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Exam 1 Study Guide
Note. Many of these key terms are also included in your book’s key terms section with specific
page numbers after each chapter (the page numbers vary across different editions so they are not
included here. Please check your textbook). The terms that are not included in your book were
covered in the lecture (see the slides).
Chapter 1 – Psychology is a way of Thinking
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Why do we learn research methods?
o Producing and consuming research
o Empiricism
Theory-data cycle
o Focus on theory, hypothesis, data (definitions and differences)
o Pre-registration
o Bandura’s bobo doll experiment (theory to hypothesis example)
Characteristics of scientific theories
o The principle of falsifiability
o The principle of parsimony
o Lack of tautology
o The issue with “proving” a hypothesis
How is science self-corrective?
o Replication
o Meta-analysis
o Peer review
Basic research, applied research, translational research
The issues with scientific journalism
o Pseudoscience
o Mozart effect
Chapter 2 – Sources of Information
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Nonscientific sources
o Personal experience
 Lack of comparison group
 Confounds
 Outliers
 Lack of room for probabilistic assumptions (unlike research)
o Intuition
 Good story
 Availability heuristic
 Common sense
 Confirmation bias
 The present/present bias
 Bias blind spot
o Authorities
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Scientific sources
o Journal articles (focus on types below)
 Empirical articles
 Know the components of empirical articles: abstract, introduction,
method, results, discussion, reference
 Theoretical articles/reviews
 Meta-analyses
o Books and edited books (focus on how different they are from journal articles)
o Scientific databases
 Psychinfo and google scholar (differences)
 Impact factor
 Paywall
Literature review
o Backward reference search
o Forward reference search
o Tools to stay organized
 Review matrix
 Mind maps
 Citation management tools (e.g., Zotero, Mendeley)
Important concepts when using scientific sources
o Active reading (reading with a purpose)
o Operationalization
o Avoiding disinformation (remember disinformation is different from
misinformation)
 Intellectual humility
Chapter 3 – Three Claims Four Validities
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What is a variable? – detecting variables in a hypothesis
o Independent variable/predictor
o Dependent variable/outcome
o The levels of a variable (categorical/continuous)
o Measured variable
o Manipulated variable
o Conceptual variable vs. operational variable
Three claims in scientific studies
o Frequency claims
o Association claims (types of associations)
o Causal claims
Correlational study
o Positive correlation/association
o Negative correlation/association
o Zero correlation/association
Four validities
o Construct validity
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o External validity
o Statistical validity
 Confidence interval
o Internal validity
o Additional criteria for causal claims (covariance and directionality/temporal
precedence)
Know what validities are meaningful for what claims (the table on p. 71, fourth edition,
can be helpful)
Chapter 4 – Ethical Guidelines for Scientific Research
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Little Albert study (focus on ethical violations)
The Nuremberg code (don’t try to memory all items, just familiarize yourself)
Tuskegee experiment (focus on ethical violations)
Milgram experiment
Belmont report
o Three basic principles: Respect for persons, justice, beneficence
Special populations in research (clue: there are three groups)
Informed consent (components, when it is not needed)
Use of deception
How to prevent harm?
o Anonymous study
o Confidential study
o Debriefing
American Psychological Association’s (APA) two additional ethical principles
Institutional Review Board (primary job)
Scientific misconduct
o Fabrication
o Falsification
o Plagiarism
o Self-plagiarism
Three principles of animal research
o Replacement
o Refinement
o Reduction
Chapter 5 –Identifying Good Measurement
o Type of measures
o Self-report
o Observation
o Physiological
o Scales of measurement
o Categorical
o Continuous (quantitative, numeric)
 Ordinal
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Interval
Ratio
o Reliability
o Test-retest reliability
o Interrater reliability
o Internal reliability
o Correlation coefficient (also known as Pearson’s R)
o Scatterplot
o Slope of association
o Strength of association
o Cronbach’s alpha
o Construct validity
o Face validity
o Content validity
o Criterion validity
o Convergent validity
o Discriminant validity
o Known groups paradigm
o Sensitivity of measures
o Range effects
o Ceiling effect
o Floor effect