[ Home ]     SUNY-Oneonta   PSYC 220 (Research Methods) Fall, 2007 – Steven J. Gilbert

CORE CONCEPT REQUIREMENT

All PSYC 220 students are required to master a limited set of concepts as a precondition for receiving a grade of C or better in the course.  Near the end of the semester you will be given a multiple-choice “Minimum Competency Test” on these concepts.  A grade of approximately 90% or better is required.  

Here are the concepts that you must MASTER.

·         You must know what a true experiment is, and what differentiates it from other research methodologies, such as quasi-experiments and descriptive research designs.

·         You must know what reliability and validity of a measure are, and how you establish them. 

·         In a description of an experiment, you must be able to identify and understand the independent variable(s), dependent variable(s), extraneous (nuisance) variable(s), confounded variables, and the experimental vs. control group(s).

·         You must know what a correlation coefficient is, and the meaning of positive, negative, and zero correlations. 

·         You must be able to understand, interpret, and draw scatter plots to represent the relationship between variables.

·         You must be clear about what correlations vs. the results of true experiments can and cannot tell us about causality.

·         You must know what blind and double-blind research designs are, and what research design problems they are meant to solve.

·         You must understand the meaning and significance of the placebo effect, and how and why placebo conditions are used in experimental research.

·         You must understand the distinction between multiple levels of an independent variable, and multiple independent variables.

·         You must know and understand factorial designs, and appreciate the meaning of designations such as 2x2, 2x3, and 2x2x2.

·         You must master the concept of an interaction in a factorial design, and understand its implications.

·         You must know what between (independent) group and within-subject (repeated measures) designs are, and the unique advantages and disadvantages of each.

·         You must understand the distinction between external validity and internal validity, appreciate what is meant by a “threat” to internal validity, and understand how sound research design handles such threats.

·         You must understand why researchers do inferential statistical tests, such as the t-test and the analysis of variance (ANOVA).

·         You must understand the concept of statistical significance, and the meaning of p<.01, p<.05, etc.

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