There are some research studies that can involve a more structured observation setting. Later on, you will hear about the Strange Situation study done on infants and attachment. In the study, the infants were observed after putting them in a specific situation involving their mother and a stranger. It was designed to assess the child s attachment style with their mother. Like all observational studies, there is a risk of observer bias in which the observer looks only for specific things and not others. Another risk is that of a lack of inter-rater reliability, which can be eliminated by using the same observer for the entire study. i
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Experimental psychology studies have the ability to look at cause and effect. Many different aspects of psychology can be looked at with these types of studies. If you ll remember, it was Wilhelm Wundt who first used these types of experiments in the 1870s. It is the preferred type of study used by researchers in behavioral psychology. There are important things to understand about this type of research study. The first is the concept of empiricism. This means that the study must be based on things that are directly observable. In addition, all theories must be testable, which means they must be proven to be true or false. Another concept in this type of research is determinism. This means that there will always be some type of cause and effect. There should also be parsimony or simplicity, meaning that the simplest explanation for something is generally preferred. There are several types of experiments that can be performed. A crucial experiment is one in which there are several hypotheses tested at the same time with the idea that one of them will be confirmed, while the others are rejected. A pilot study is sometimes done initially in order to look for potential weaknesses in the study design and to optimize future experimentation. A field experiment is done outside of a laboratory in a more natural setting. You need to know the concepts of reliability and validity. Reliability means that the observation in the study is repeatable and consistent from time to time. This is why
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