Psych 3b03 Special Populations - Research Methods

Psych 3B03 – Special Populations: Research Methods

“Science” is latin for “to know”

Yet, scientists rarely PROVE anything.

• Research methodology involves: hypothesis (way of explaining phenomenon)

• Use deduction to come up with a series of predictions from the hypothesis
• Use an experimental method to test these predictions
• From the observations gathered by the experiment, we use induction to interpret our findings in relation to the original hypothesis.

Definitions:

Inclusion Criteria: Criteria participants/research subjects must meet in order to be implemented and included in the study. EX) Looking for children between 5-10 years old.

Exclusion Criteria: Criteria which determines the subject an invalid participant. E.g. children that are on psychotropic medications are excluded from this survey. One must PASS exclusion criteria in order to be studied.

Direct Observation - (Behavioural Scientists) observing a subject’s behaviour in a natural setting with no manipulation. Sometimes it’s easiest just to set up a camera in the room instead of actually being present in the room, This causes the least stress possible. The data must be “Operationalized”.

There may be other barriers which prevents people from participating in the experiment when randomly sampling.

• Unable to get to the clinic or research site
• Unable to participate due to unlisted conditions (handicaps)

Validity: IQ (Weschler) Tests have high Construct Validity containing many well-defined steps on how to EXACTLY perform the test over many trials, so it maintains near perfect effect on a various level of subjects.

        - Correctness, Soundness, amor appropriateness of findings.

        - Outlandish claims are not accepted.

GOOD Internal Validity: If explanation is correct or sound

GOOD External Validity: How generalizable the results are, can they be applied to a greater population?

Reliability: Other researchers must be able to perform exactly the same experiment and under the same conditions and produce similar consistent observations and measurements. (Reliability is achieved by having a very strong Procedure method).

Replicability: on the “results” side - is key in determining that a result/experiment is reliable.

If all of these conditions are MET, the experiment and researcher will be accepted into the scientific community as being valid and “true”, (not proven).

READ: fMRI Study - Done by G. Hall (Prof.) “Backwards Masking Anxious Face”

• Determine Reliability, Validity & replicability. Based on the face that you think you could go out tomorrow and replicate this experiment and be confident that my results would end up statistically similar.

P300 - Brain Fingerprinting

Produces reliable results under certain types of conditions. - Take upwards of 8 trials to produce an average “baseline”.

• Internal Validity

Methods of Research:

Descriptive: - Observational, case studies (single subject)