The first step to establishing a study's importance is to use inferential statistics or replication studies to determine whether the findings are replicable.
If inferential stats show that a study result is sig, researchers can conclude that if they ran the study in exactly the same way, we would probably obtain the same result.
Replication studies are a concrete way of establishing a study's replicability.
There
are three main types of replication studies.
-Direction replications: attempt to repeat the original study exactly
-Conceptual replication: same conceptual variables as the original study, but they operationalize the variables differently
-Replication Plus extension studies: repeat the original study but introduce new participant variables, situations, or levels of the IV.
Meta-analyses collect the effect sizes from all published [when possible, unpublished] studies that have tested
the relationship between a set of variables, using stat tools to compute the average effect size for a particular research question.
Meta analyses are powerful tools that help quantify whether an effect exists in the literature, and if so, how large the effect is and what moderates it.
When researchers are in generalization mode, they care whether the samples they are studying are representative. Whether the data from sample A are applicable to population A and if it could be applicable
to population B.
When researchers are in theory-testing mode, researchers design studies that test a theory to find out whether the study turns out the way the theory predicts it would.
-If the study doesn't turn out the same way, the theory must be modified and the new theory must be tested in a new study.
-Generalization is left for later studies which will test whether the theory holds in a sample that is representative of another population.
Question two assumptions about
generalization:
1. Important research should use random samples from populations
2. Important research should apply to people from both sexes and all ethnicities, social classes, states, etc.
--In some studies, it is important to use random samples and a variety of people, but diverse, rep samples are primarily important when researchers are in generalization mode.
--In theory testing mode, researchers do not [yet] consider whether their samples are rep of some population, so
external validity is much less important than internal validity.
Researchers who make frequency claims are always in generalization mode, but they are also in generalization mode when they ask whether an association or causal claim can be generalized to a different group of people.
Cultural psychologists have documented how psychological discoveries are not always applicable cross-culturally. Even seemingly basic cognitive or visual processes may not operate the same way in different
cultural contexts. The work of cultural psychologists serves as a reminder that when researchers collect data only from WEIRD samples, they cannot assume that the theories they have developed in theory-testing mode will apply to all human beings.
Question the assumption that to be important, research must be conducted in settings that resemble the real world.
-Some research has high ecological validity, other research takes place in labs.
-While some experiments might be high in
experimental realism, they may not resemble other real world settings outside of the lab.
-Research from "artificial settings" help researchers test theories in the most internally valid way possible, and their lessons usually apply to other real-world situations.
Myers' Psychology for AP
2nd EditionDavid G Myers
900 solutions
Social Psychology
10th EditionElliot Aronson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers, Timothy D. Wilson
525 solutions
HDEV5
6th EditionSpencer A. Rathus
380 solutions
Social Psychology
10th EditionElliot Aronson, Robin M. Akert, Timothy D. Wilson
525 solutions