Independent variables, dependent variables, t-tests, anovas, experiments, between subjects, within subjects, confounds…confused? You won’t be after you watch this week’s video episode. Learn research methods in psychology the fun way – by choosing an interesting topic. In this video I explain the basic concepts of research while examining the effect of gray hair on credibility. More fun than…let me think…well, trust me, it’ll be interesting.
Resources for This Episode
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The web site where you can change your appearance by mixing your photo with celebrities is called Hairmixer.
Notes
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Independent Variable: the variable you manipulate (“type of hair” in this example).
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Dependent Variable: the variable you measure (“credibility” in this example).
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Operational Definition: the exact data that you will collect. In this example, a subject’s rating on a 1 to 10 credibility scale is my operational definition of credibility.
Related Episodes
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Check out episode 3 in which I discuss hypotheses and Popper’s important concept of falsifiability.
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Looking for more fun with research? Check out my episode on how consumer researcher‘s carefully watch your behavior in the grocery store.
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If you want to review many of the psychological research terms mentioned in this episode, check the “the mappr” – an audio review program I wrote.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Dr. Britt,
Thank you for this site. I actually just stumbled across it one day. You were able to simply, efficiently, etc., etc., etc., get the point across in just a few minutes on the basics of research terminology.
I only wish I came across this site years ago when taking my first course in Research Methods. I left the class with an “A”. Although, I was still unsure of the topic. You were able to get the point across within a few short minutes.
I’m a Senior at UNF and use this site to help with my current studies!!!
Debbie – thanks so much. The two videos on research design were fun to do. I taught the course for many years and I tried to make it fun – god knows the topic can get deadly boring. Please let other students know about the podcast. It’s hard to get the word out. Again thx for your very kind comments. Michael
Hello, I stumbled upon your web site and would love to be able to watch Episode 45 Basic research design. For some reason the video isnt available. Thank you so much for your time. Jill
Jill, I’m checking the video now and it’s working for me. Can you tell me what’s happening on your end? – Michael
This was a pretty cool design, i was wondering if you have anything like this about Observational Studies? I am in a research methods class and have to do a study that is only observational, cant manipulate any variables, but i am having a hard time thinking of anything. Does anyone have any ideas or maybe taken a similar class and have any input?
Sergio: I’ll have to give that some thought. I know students are typically stuck when it comes to ideas for observational studies. Hmm…one idea that comes to mind is to observe drivers to see if when there are two people in the car – male and female – does the male typically always drive? You have to make sure that you only count the cars in which there is only a male and female driving – if there are lots of people in the car then you have other social-psychological variables at play that could affect your results. Assuming you find that the male is typically the one driving, you can hypothesize that this could be explained by social roles (men typically assume roles of power while women are encouraged to assume roles of support). There’s one idea anyway. Hope it helps.
Yes thanks for the help Michael,
that sounds like a good idea and would be easy to do. Easier than the idea that my friend an i came up with, we were thinking about schemas. We thought about what would happen if you took the male sign on the bathroom door and made it pink and female sign and made it blue, because of schema of blue is boy and pink is girl. We thought that the sign would be ignored and the color would make people choose the wrong bathroom. Its not that hard to do, but the trouble was the signs themselves, you would probably need real signs for this to work out well.
Help! I am doing a project on short-term memory(chunking) and am a bit confused as to the IV and DV and how to display my findings, any ideas greatly appreciated!
Kate: you could do a study on mnemonics in quite a number of different ways. The IV might be the type of mnemonic that a group of Ss is given (say, keyword vs. no mnemonic) and the DV might be the average number of words recalled from a list. You findings would probably be displayed in a bar graph. Feel free to email me if you need any other info/suggestions.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS. i asked a question on yahoo answers, and you answered it with this video.. i accidentally made one of my other answers the “best answer”…. i really wanted this one to be the best answer. THANKS AGAIN SO MUCH. i’m definitely going to use this method. thank you thank you thank you.
Ktistina, no problem. Glad you found the video useful. That’s what it’s all about for me. Thanks for your note.
Fantastic, superb, amazing,…….5 STARS!. instantly gave me an idea for my research!..not to mention with the added info’s(confound variable) etc…Thumps up!..
All i can say is thank you very much…SUBSCRIBED!