Introduction to Psychology

Introduction to Psychology Disadvantages: • The major limitation of a case study is that it is a poor method for determining cause-effect relationships because, in most studies, explanations of behaviors occur after the fact and there is little opportunity to rule out alternative explanations. • A second problem concerns the generalizability of the findings, meaning, will the principles uncovered in a case study hold true for other people or in other situations. • A third problem is the possible lack of objectivity in the way data are gathered and interpreted, because case studies are often based on the researcher’s subjective impressions. Naturalistic Observation The researcher observes behavior as it occurs in a natural setting, and attempts to avoid influencing that behavior. Naturalistic observation is used to study human behavior. Naturalistic observation can yield rich descriptions of behavior in real-life settings and permits examination of relations between variables. Like case studies, naturalistic observation does not permit clear causal conclusions. In the real world, many variables simultaneously influence behavior, and they cannot be disentangled with this type of research technique. There is also the possibility of bias in how researchers interpret what they observe. Finally, the presence of an observer may disrupt a person’s or animal’s behavior. Correlational Research This type of research involves assessing the relationship between two variables. Because neither variable is manipulated, there is no way to determine if changes in one variable cause changes in the other. Only how changes in one are related to changes in the other can be determined. A positive relationship means that high scores in one variable tend to be paired with high scores in the other variable. A negative relationship means that high scores in one variable tend to be paired with low scores in the other variable. In addition to the direction of the relationship, a correlation coefficient will describe the strength of the relationship. The benefits of conducting correlational research include: establishing if relations found in the laboratory generalize to the outside world, and discovering associations that are subsequently studied under controlled laboratory conditions. Moreover, for practical or ethical reasons, some questions cannot be studied with experiments but can be examined in a correlational study, and correlation data allows us to make predictions.

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