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Social Psychology -- Methodology

Social Psychology -- Methodology. Observation (incl. participant obs.) Archival analysis – type of observational method, the researcher examines the accumulated documents of a culture Inter-judge reliability = the level of agreement between 2 or more people who observe and code data

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Social Psychology -- Methodology

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  1. Social Psychology -- Methodology • Observation (incl. participant obs.) • Archival analysis – type of observational method, the researcher examines the accumulated documents of a culture • Inter-judge reliability = the level of agreement between 2 or more people who observe and code data • Correlational method/correlation coefficient (e.g. surveys) • Experiments

  2. Social Psychology -- Methodology • David Sears (1986) has shown that since the 1960’s over 80% of social psychology studies have relied on college students tested in the laboratory context. • The majority of these students were enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses • Can you think of any issues here?

  3. Internal Validity in Experiments • Keeping everything the same but the IV OR making sure that nothing else besides the IV can affect the DV • Accomplished by controlling all extraneous variables • Differences among participants are minimized by random selection and random assignment to condition • What does this mean?

  4. External Validity in Experiments • By gaining enough control over the situation (for internal validity), the situation can become artificial and distant from real life. • What is external validity?

  5. E.V. = Generalizability Across Situations • Researchers strive to make their studies as realistic as possible • Mundane realism: the extent to which the experiment is similar to real-life situations • Psychological realism: the extent to which psychological processes triggered are similar to processes that occur in everyday life (rationale for cover stories) • Making an experiment realistic takes lots of creative talent from the researchers

  6. E.V. = Generalizability Across People • The only way to be certain that the results of an experiment represent the behavior of a population is to ensure that participants are randomly selected • This is impractical & expensive • If we accept the premise that there are psych. Processes shared by all people in all places, & these processes are being studied in experiments, then we don’t need participants from all over the globe

  7. E.V. = Replication • Ultimate test of experiment’s external validity • When results are somewhat variable, researchers resort to meta-analysis • Averages the results of 2 or more studies to see if the effect of an IB is reliable

  8. E.V. = Cross-Cultural Studies • Our understanding of the e.v. of many findings can be enriched by doing cross-cultural studies • Two main goals: to explore similarities and differences between cultures • Emic/Etic Distinction • Emic: the study of the specific or local • Etic: the study of the universal characteristics of societies

  9. Last Thoughts on External Validity • Laboratory method = high internal validity • However, we can be less sure that the results have high external validity

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