From Research Methods in Psychology

Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction to the Book 2 The Role of Theory in Psychology 3 Collecting Data - Experimental Design 4 Collecting data - Non-Experimental Designs 5 Measurement in Psychology 6 Issues in Psychological Research 7 Descriptive Statistics 8 What are Inferential Statistics 9 Using Inferential Statistics 10 References 11 Copying and Use

Introduction

This wiki is based on the textbook Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology: Success in Your Psychology Degree, by Jeremy Miles, and originally published by Learning Matters. The book is designed to help people in the first year of a psychology degree in the UK (it might help others, but I don't know as much about what they cover).

Now it's republished as a Wiki, and anyone can edit it - it becomes a collaborative attempt to write a textbook. No book is perfect, and everyone thinks that they can do something better. Be bold, if you want to change something, or add something, go ahead.

The book itself had an introduction as well, which was primarily about how to study.

Introduction to the Book

1. Why do I need to know this stuff?
2. Learning about research methods and statistics in psychology
3. Writing research reports in psychology

The Role of Theory in Psychology

1. How to link theory and research
2. Testing theories: Hypotheses
3. Putting it all together

Collecting Data - Experimental Design

1. How will you be assessed on this
2. The structure of experiments
3. Independent variables
4. Dependent variables
5. Extraneous variables
6. Designing the study

Collecting data - Non-Experimental Designs

1. Experimental versus non-experimental research
2. Non-Experimental Designs

Measurement in Psychology

1. Introduction to Measurement
2. Levels of measurement
3. Reliability and validity
4. Methods of data collection
5. Further Reading

Issues in Psychological Research

1. Sampling
2. Ethical Issues

Descriptive Statistics

1. Initial Description of Data
2. Measures of Central Tendency
3. Measures of Dispersion

What are Inferential Statistics

1. What are inferential statistics
2. When things go wrong
3. Further Reading

Using Inferential Statistics

1. Introduction
2. Confidence Intervals
3. Interval / Ordinal Dependent Variable
4. Nominal Dependent Variable
5. Correlation

References

Copying and Use

This site is released under the [GNU Free Documentations Licence]. In a nutshell, that means that you can copy it, change it, do whatever you like with it, you don't need to tell anyone, or ask permission, you can print it out and charge people for it if you like, but anyone you give it to has to follow the same rules. It's probably a bad idea to pass anything you read here off as your own work, for two reasons. (1) It will be really easy to find out that it's not your work. (2) It might not be true.