Ch 1 Lab
Research Methods
For each of the following research questions:
•
Identify independent (predictor) variable
•
Identify dependent (outcome) variable
•
Operationally
define each (see how below)
•
Design a study to test
–
Would a descriptive/correlational or experimental be
best?
–
Where will you get your subjects?
–
How and what data will you collect?
•
What kind of conclusions can be drawn?
•
Who can we generalize our findings to?
•
Discuss the relative level of difficulty involved in
creating these operational definitions. Would they anticipate being challenged
on the grounds of validity? Why or why not?
1. A health psychologist and an industrial/organizational
psychologist are interested in determining whether job stress has detrimental
effects on health.
2. A clinical psychologist would like to know whether a
history of early childhood abuse is related to later vulnerability to
depression, substance abuse, and addiction.
3. A cognitive psychologist would like to find out whether
more extensive education might protect individuals from dementia and related
disorders later in life.
4. An educational psychologist is studying the effectiveness
of a special program for teen parents. The program provides education and
support related to parenting skills and career goals. He wants to know whether
participants’ school performance and psychological health improve.
5. A social psychologist is interested in the relationship
between religiosity and marital satisfaction.
Operational
Definitions
As noted in the text, it is important to use
operational definitions in order to accurately measure variables of interest.
Specifically, operational definitions define “the variable in terms of how it
is measured, manipulated, or changed.”
Of course,
researchers in psychology face some special problems in trying to
operationalize variables. Some variables are fairly easy to operationalize;
others are not. A health psychologist who is studying the effects of social
support on the success of obese patients participating in a weight-loss problem
can easily operationalize the dependent variable “weight loss.” Ask your
students how they might operationalize the independent variable “social
support.” They should be able to figure out that “social support” is perhaps a
little less concrete and more contestable than “weight loss” but is still
relatively easy to make measurable.
Variables
that seem more vague or contestable are more difficult to operationalize.
Researchers find ways to do so despite the difficulty, although sometimes the
operational definition chosen by researchers leads to controversy regarding
whether the variable is truly represented by the chosen definition. If the
operational definition created or chosen by the researchers does not actually
represent the variable of interest, the study and its results may not be valid.
An operational definition is not necessarily the best definition; it is simply
a measurable one. The term “subject variable” is used to refer to study
variables that cannot be manipulated or differentiated in any real sense.
