INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH METHODOLOGY SUMMARY
NOTES QUESTIONS WITH CORRECT ANSWERS GRADED A+
Types of knowledge - (answer)- Authority
- Common sense
- Personal experience
- Intuition
Authority - (answer)Don't always base their conclusions on facts
Personal experience - (answer)Important to generating new ideas, but is not legitimate
evidence
Issues with personal experience - (answer)- Sampling bias
- Observer bias
- Confounded variables
Sampling bias - (answer)Your observations are not representative for the population
Observer bias - (answer)When your observations are influences by your expectations
Confounded variables - (answer)When the factor of interest systematically varies with
other effects
Validity - (answer)Whether you measure what we intend to measure
Problems with validity - (answer)- Sampling bias
- Observer bias
- Confounded variables
Fraud - (answer)Making up findings
Incompetent research - (answer)Research that is conducted so poorly it is rendered
useless
Research producers - (answer)Professional scientist
Applied research - (answer)Researcher does his work with a practical problem in mind
,Basic research - (answer)Believes that we are in a better position to repair, improve or
troubleshoot any system if we know how it is supposed to work in the first place
The scientific method - (answer)Look and see
The empirical cycle - (answer)- Theory
- Prediction
- Testing
- Evaluation
- Observation
(Can start from any one of these phases)
Mook's theory - data cycle - (answer)- Data
- Testing
- Prediction confirmed or disconfirmed
- Evaluation
- Theory
- Prediction
Mook's principle - (answer)We cannot relate anything to anything unless they both vary
Irrefutable theories - (answer)- Theories that cannot be tested
- Not falsifiable
Correction mechanisms - (answer)- Peer review
- Replication
Scientific investigation - (answer)- Checks out all the possibilities one by one
- By setting things up so that we can see whether that was where the problem was
Experiment - (answer)Making a manipulation and noting its effect
, Scientific theory - (answer)A statement or set of statements that describe general
principles
Low-level (local) theories - (answer)By which we can explain limited classes of
phenomena
Higher up the ladder theories - (answer)Are more general theories that explain the lower
level ones and relate them to each other
Theory - (answer)Cannot be directly tested because it is too general. Therefore, you
need a hypothesis that you derived from the theory
Hypothesis - (answer)Derives from the theory
Prediction - (answer)- Concrete; it specifies what will happen, when and with whom
If prediction if confirmed - (answer)We say the theory is not refuted
If we don't confirm the prediction - (answer)- And the theory cannot be adapted
- There are no errors in the study
- Replications also don't confirm the prediction
- Then, there's a problem with the prediction
If a prediction is not confirmed and we took all the measures - (answer)Then theory is
defeated/we have a problem
Anomaly - (answer)When there's a not understood consistency in the theory/data
If almost all the data proves a theory to be correct with very little or no data to disprove it
then we say - (answer)The theory is well supported or well established
Present-present bias - (answer)- The tendency to focus on the yes-yes cell
- The tendency to rely only on what is present and ignore what is absent when
evaluating the evidence for a conclusion
Categorical variable - (answer)- Qualitative
- Percentage
Continuous variable - (answer)- Quantitative
- Normal distribution
NOTES QUESTIONS WITH CORRECT ANSWERS GRADED A+
Types of knowledge - (answer)- Authority
- Common sense
- Personal experience
- Intuition
Authority - (answer)Don't always base their conclusions on facts
Personal experience - (answer)Important to generating new ideas, but is not legitimate
evidence
Issues with personal experience - (answer)- Sampling bias
- Observer bias
- Confounded variables
Sampling bias - (answer)Your observations are not representative for the population
Observer bias - (answer)When your observations are influences by your expectations
Confounded variables - (answer)When the factor of interest systematically varies with
other effects
Validity - (answer)Whether you measure what we intend to measure
Problems with validity - (answer)- Sampling bias
- Observer bias
- Confounded variables
Fraud - (answer)Making up findings
Incompetent research - (answer)Research that is conducted so poorly it is rendered
useless
Research producers - (answer)Professional scientist
Applied research - (answer)Researcher does his work with a practical problem in mind
,Basic research - (answer)Believes that we are in a better position to repair, improve or
troubleshoot any system if we know how it is supposed to work in the first place
The scientific method - (answer)Look and see
The empirical cycle - (answer)- Theory
- Prediction
- Testing
- Evaluation
- Observation
(Can start from any one of these phases)
Mook's theory - data cycle - (answer)- Data
- Testing
- Prediction confirmed or disconfirmed
- Evaluation
- Theory
- Prediction
Mook's principle - (answer)We cannot relate anything to anything unless they both vary
Irrefutable theories - (answer)- Theories that cannot be tested
- Not falsifiable
Correction mechanisms - (answer)- Peer review
- Replication
Scientific investigation - (answer)- Checks out all the possibilities one by one
- By setting things up so that we can see whether that was where the problem was
Experiment - (answer)Making a manipulation and noting its effect
, Scientific theory - (answer)A statement or set of statements that describe general
principles
Low-level (local) theories - (answer)By which we can explain limited classes of
phenomena
Higher up the ladder theories - (answer)Are more general theories that explain the lower
level ones and relate them to each other
Theory - (answer)Cannot be directly tested because it is too general. Therefore, you
need a hypothesis that you derived from the theory
Hypothesis - (answer)Derives from the theory
Prediction - (answer)- Concrete; it specifies what will happen, when and with whom
If prediction if confirmed - (answer)We say the theory is not refuted
If we don't confirm the prediction - (answer)- And the theory cannot be adapted
- There are no errors in the study
- Replications also don't confirm the prediction
- Then, there's a problem with the prediction
If a prediction is not confirmed and we took all the measures - (answer)Then theory is
defeated/we have a problem
Anomaly - (answer)When there's a not understood consistency in the theory/data
If almost all the data proves a theory to be correct with very little or no data to disprove it
then we say - (answer)The theory is well supported or well established
Present-present bias - (answer)- The tendency to focus on the yes-yes cell
- The tendency to rely only on what is present and ignore what is absent when
evaluating the evidence for a conclusion
Categorical variable - (answer)- Qualitative
- Percentage
Continuous variable - (answer)- Quantitative
- Normal distribution
