Experimental Designs

-Manipulate IV (1+ levels), test effect on DV

-Experimental Group gets treatment
-Control identical except no treatment not every study has a
control group
-Quasi-experimental: natural variability in IV
-Read Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science (article)
Critical thinking- search for issues in the following studies (format,
data, concept):
Study #1
-Listen in on conversation at a mall, record the sex of the person at
whom people are laughing
-RESULTS: In 30 conversations, this person was more often a man (60%
of cases)
-Therefore, men are funnier
Study #2
-We measure laughter volume (db) in 200 people who watched clips of
Youtube comics (2 M, 2 F)
-RESULTS: When the comic was a woman, people laughed 50% louder
-Therefore, women are funnier
Potential problems:
-the people in the lab study laughed harder or differently because
they knew they were being watched?
- some of the people at the mall were on drugs?
- the YT clips were different lengths? or different jokes? (Substantially
different content being presented/compared)
Key factors in experiments:
-Confounds: anything that affects the DV and may vary across
conditions
-Third variables and directionality
-Representativeness of sample
-Validity
Selecting participants:
Population: group you want to know about
Sample: subset you actually test
-Random sample: drawn at random from population (equally likely for
everyone)
-may try to ensure representativeness

-Convenience sample: drawn from easily accessible group (e.g.,

undergrads, MTurk)
-culturally representative? Biased respondents?
Randomisation
-Random Assignment: use some random method to allocate
participants to conditions reduce the influence of confounds or
selection bias
Getting Meta
Meta-analyses aggregate findings from multiple studies to determine
an overall average result/effect
-control for the influence of study size
-test differences between study characteristics
Important Stats Concept
-Statistical significance: result is unlikely to be found by chance
(usually 5% cut-off)
-Practical significance: does the result have any real-world value or
meaning?
-Effect sizes: standardized way of quantifying the impact of a result
(e.g., differences between groups)
Interactive demo on how p values are problematic
http://www.fivethirthyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/
Statistics & quantitative methods
-acknowledge your knowledge
-consume relevant literature
-train and learn
Research Ethics
-When might it be unethical to conduct experiments (vs correlational
methods)?
-IRBs (institutional review boards): safety, privacy, risk/benefit, &
rights
-Informed Consent
-Deception & Debriefing
Animal Research Ethics
-Allow research models in areas where human experimentation would
be unethical
Review boards (e.g., IACUC)
-ensure animals safe, well
-evaluate impact of research
Ethics Code

-Broader guidelines by which some psychologists are governed

-Ethics in clinical work
-Ethics in research & academic pursuits
-publication & collaboration
http://www.apa.org/independent-review/APA-FINAL-Report-7.2.15.pdf