Module2
- 1. Module 2 Psychology & Science
- 2. INTRODUCTION • Blake’s problem • Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – Not diagnosed by any medical tests – Diagnosed on the basis of the occurrence of certain behavioral problems – Symptoms should have been present from an early age, persisted for at least six months, and contributed to maladaptive development
- 3. INTRODUCTION (CONT’D) • ADHD – Child must have six or more symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity, such as • making careless mistakes in schoolwork • not following instructions • being easily distracted • fidgeting • leaving classroom seat • talking excessively
- 4. ANSWERING QUESTIONS: SCIENTIFIC METHOD • Armchair psychology is the practice of answering questions about human behavior and mental processes through informal observation and speculation • The scientific method is a multi-step technique of gathering information and answering questions so that errors and biases are minimized – Review the literature – Formulate a hypothesis – Design the study – Collect the data – Draw conclusions – Report the findings
- 5. ADVANTAGES OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD • Specific and precise • An empirical process that reduces error by making research findings available for replication and critique by others • Can be used for any of the four goals of psychology
- 6. DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH • Three types of descriptive research – Survey – Naturalistic observation – Case study
- 7. DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH • Survey – A method used to obtain information by asking many individuals –either in person, by telephone, by mail, or the Internet—to answer a fixed set of questions about particular subjects
- 8. SURVEY (CONT’D) • Disadvantages – Information can contain errors – Results can be biased – How questions are worded and who asks them • Advantages – Quick and efficient way to collect information on behaviors, beliefs, experiences, and attitudes from a large sample of people – Can compare answers from various ethnic, age, socioeconomic, and cultural groups – Help identify problems and evaluate treatment programs
- 9. Naturalistic Observation • A method researchers use to gather information by observing individuals’ behaviors in a relatively normal environment without attempting to change or control the situation • Disadvantages – Researcher’s own beliefs and values may bias interpretation of observations – Time-consuming and requires a great deal of training and effort – Lack of control makes it impossible to assign cause
- 10. Naturalistic Observation (continued) • Advantages – Opportunity to study behavior in real-life situation – Behavior in natural settings likely to be more “typical” – Reduces likelihood that participants are trying to present themselves in a particular way – First-hand observations reduce memory errors that might taint other methods
- 11. CASE STUDY • Case study – In-depth analysis of the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, experiences, behaviors, or problems of a single individual – Disadvantages • May contain memory errors • Researcher may bias the questioning of the person being studied • Difficult to generalize
- 12. CASE STUDY (CONT’D) • Disadvantage (cont’d) • Personal case study: testimonial – statement in support of a particular viewpoint based on detailed observation of a person’s own personal experience • Error and bias: self-fulfilling prophecy – having a strong belief or making a statement about a future behavior and then acting, usually unknowingly, to fulfill or carry out that behavior • Advantage – Detailed information allows greater understanding of a particular person’s life
- 13. CASE STUDY (CONT’D) Video: Vaccines and Autism
- 14. CULTURAL DIVERSITY: USE OF PLACEBOS • Placebo – Intervention, such as taking a pill, receiving an injection, or undergoing an operation, that resembles medical therapy but, in fact, has no medical effects • Placebo effect – Change in a patient’s illness that’s attributable to an imagined treatment rather than to a medical treatment
- 15. EXPERIMENT: USE OF PLACEBOS
- 16. CULTURAL DIVERSITY: USE OF PLACEBOS (CONT’D) – Researchers believe that placebos MAY work because beliefs and thoughts are powerful to produce the same relief provided by real drugs – These effects may even occur when the person knows they’ve received a placebo – Testimonials from around the worlds exist for a variety of placebos, including tiger bones
- 17. CULTURAL DIVERSITY: USE OF PLACEBOS (CONT’D) • Other placebo examples – Centipedes – Cough medication – Garlic
- 18. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH • Correlation – An association or relationship between the occurrence of two or more events • Correlation coefficient – A number that indicates the strength of a relationship between two or more events: the closer the number is to –1.00 or +1.00, the greater is the strength of the relationship
- 20. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Perfect positive correlation coefficient – +1.00 means that an increase in one event is always matched by an equal increase in a second event • Positive correlation coefficient – Indicates that as one event tends to increase, the second event tends to, but does not always, increase – Increases from +0.01 to +0.99 indicate a strengthening of the relationship between the occurrence of two events
- 21. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Zero correlation – Indicates that there is no relationship between the occurrence of one event and the occurrence of a second event • Negative correlation coefficient – Indicates that as one event tends to increase, the second event tends to, but does not always, decrease – -0.01 to -0.99 indicates a strengthening in the relationship of one event increasing and the other decreasing
- 22. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Perfect negative correlation coefficient – -1.00 means that an increase in one event is always matched by an equal decrease in a second event – Correlations such as -1.00 are virtually never found in applied psychological research
- 23. CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Disadvantage – Assumption of cause and effect • Advantages – Provide clues to the actual causal relationship – Help predict behavior
- 24. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH • Experiment – a method for identifying cause-and-effect relationships by following a set of rules and guidelines that minimize the possibility of error, bias, and chance occurrences
- 25. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Conducting an experiment: Seven rules – Rule 1: Ask – Rule 2: Identify – Rule 3: Choose – Rule 4: Assign – Rule 5: Manipulate – Rule 6: Measure – Rule 7: Analyze
- 26. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Rule 1: Ask – Hypothesis – Educated guess about some phenomenon stated in precise, concrete language to rule out any confusion or error in the meaning of its terms
- 27. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Rule 2: Identify – Independent variable • a treatment or something that the researcher controls or manipulates – Dependent variable • one or more of the participants’ behaviors that are used to measure the potential effects of the treatment or independent variable
- 28. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Rule 3: Choose – Population • every person that exists in the world that matches the criteria the researchers are interested in studying – Sample • the portion of the population selected to participate in the study – Random selection • each participant in a sample population has an equal chance of being selected for the experiment
- 29. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Rule 4: Assign – Experimental group • those participants who receive the treatment – Control group • participants who undergo all the same procedures as the experimental participants but don’t receive the treatment
- 30. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Rule 5: Manipulate – Double-blind procedure • neither participants nor researchers know which group is receiving which treatment • Rule 6: Measure – By giving the experimental group a different treatment than the control group, researchers can measure how the independent variable (treatment) affects those behaviors selected as the dependent variables
- 31. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Rule 7: Analyze – Statistical procedures • used to determine whether differences observed in dependent variables (behaviors) are due to independent variables (treatment) or to error or chance occurrence
- 32. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Advantages – Identifying cause and effect relationships – Helps eliminate extraneous variables as causes • Extraneous variables are variables other than the independent variable that may influence the dependent variable in a study
- 33. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Disadvantages – Not representative of population – Experimenter bias • Expectations of the experimenter that participants will behave or respond in a certain way – Participant expectations – Cannot be used to study certain questions because of ethical concerns
- 35. RESEARCH FOCUS: ADHD CONTROVERSIES • Diagnosis – ADHD diagnosis is based on behavioral symptoms rather than laboratory or medical testing – Because behaviors vary in severity across settings and across cultures, there is potential for misdiagnosis – To try to minimize this potential, diagnostic criteria require symptoms to be present • At least six months • Across at least two settings
- 36. RESEARCH FOCUS: ADHD CONTROVERSIES Video: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- 37. RESEARCH FOCUS: ADHD CONTROVERSIES • Treatment – Non-drug/behavioral – Combined drug and behavioral • Long-term effects – Professionals used to believe children would outgrow ADHD – Yet many adults treated with drug treatments still require them in adulthood
- 38. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH • Concerns about being a subject – Human and animal • Code of ethics – American Psychological Association publishes a code of ethics and conduct for psychologists to follow when doing research, counseling, teaching, and related activities – Code spells out the responsibilities of psychologists and the rights of participants
- 39. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH (CONT’D) – Debriefing – Includes explaining the purpose and method of the experiment, asking subjects their feelings about participating in the experiment, and helping the subjects deal with possible guilt or doubts that arise from their behaviors
- 40. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Role of deception – One way that researchers control for participants’ expectations is to use bogus procedures or instructions that prevent participants from learning the experiment’s true purpose – Researchers must justify the deceptive techniques by the scientific, educational, or applied value of the study and can only use deception if no other reasonable way to test the hypothesis is available
- 41. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH (CONT’D)
- 42. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Ethics of animal research – How many animals are used in research? • estimated over 20 million animals used each year in biomedical research – Are research animals mistreated? • of the millions of animals used in research, only a few cases of animal mistreatment have been confirmed • researchers support the Animal Research Act
- 43. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Ethics of animal research – Is the use of animals justified? • Research on animals has led to a better understanding of how stress affects health, mechanisms underlying learning, development/treatment of depression, and much more – Who checks on the use of animals in research? • US Department of Agriculture • universities have animal subject committees
- 44. APPLICATION: ETHICS IN DOING RESEARCH (CONT’D) • Ethics of animal research – How do we strike a balance? • many experts in the scientific, medical, and mental health communities believe that the conscientious and responsible use of animals in research is justified and should continue