PSY 205: Research Methods I



PSY 205: Research Methods I

Module 1: Practice Problem

Answer the following questions based on the Chapter 1 material in your Christensen text.

1. Many people believe that “opposites attract.” Which of the ways of knowing do you think is responsible for such “knowledge?” (You may think there is more than one.) Justify your answer.

2. Define pseudoscience. What distinguishes it from science?

3. Positive psychology focuses on the psychological states, traits, and social institutions that make life most worth living. If you wanted to do a positive psychology study on the effect that happiness has on well-being, how might you operationalize “happiness?” How might you operationalize “well-being?” Why is operationalism an essential element of the scientific method?

4. America has an obesity problem. How can we understand this problem? Use the scientific objectives (i.e., description, explanation, prediction, and control) to show how science would acquire knowledge about this problem.

5. Describe, in a way that a friend who is not studying psychology could understand, the importance of the assumption of uniformity in scientific research and explain why each of the axioms which follow it supports scientists’ work to uncover deterministic relationships for behavior.

6. Give an example of when you have exhibited each of the characteristics of a scientist in your daily life.

Do the following based on the material in your Salkind text.

1. Make sure you have the Analysis ToolPak for Excel 2007 on a computer you can use.

2. Find a graph showing statistical data and describe it. There are plenty of sources available. You might look on the internet, in your Introduction to Psychology text, or a newspaper (e.g., USA Today runs graphs everyday).

7. Create formulas for the following in an Excel worksheet:

a. Add the values of 6, 10 and 12 and multiply the outcome by 8.

b. Average the values of 10, 14, 18, and 20.

8. a. What would the function look like for summing the values in cells B3 through B12?

b. What would the function look like for averaging the values B3 through B12?

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download