SHDH3110 L1

1
SHDH3110
STATISTICS AND
RESEARCH METHODS
IN PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 1: COURSE INTRODUCTION
2 LECTURE 1
• Course overview
• Why do psychology students need to learn statistics
• The research process

3 FALLACY 1: STATS = MATH…
• “I really hate math, therefore I hate stats too” or “ I am bad

at math. I have no chance in stats"
4 FALLACY 2: PSYCHOLOGY =
SIGMUND FREUD
• “I choose psychology as my major because I want to learn how to read others’

mind and how to hypnotize other people”
• Pop psychology vs. academic psychology
• Academic psychology is a SCIENTIFIC discipline that studies the human psyche

and behaviors
• Everything needs to be empirical (evidence-based)
• You need good RESEARCH METHODS to collect the data
• You need NUMBERS to quantify variables
• You need STATS to test if an idea/hypothesis is really true.
5 WHY STUDY RESEARCH METHODS
AND STATS
E.g.,
• Class A’s midterm average: 66%
• Class B’s midterm average: 68%
• Is it really true that class B is better than class A?
6 WHAT DOES BEING “SCIENTIFIC”
MEAN?
• Method of science
• Systematically observe and record the event
• A.k.a. empirical approach
• Empirical: “based on data rather than pure logic”
• Everything must be QUANTIFIABLE (numbers!)
• Science only accounts for testable problems and must be falsifiable

• E.g., ghosts? soul? Freud’s idea of the unconscious?
• If it is not observable/quantifiable, it is not scientific because you can never show
whether it exists or not
7 GENERAL PROCEDURES OF CONDUCTING
A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY
1. research question
2. literature review to find a research gap/research motivation
3. formulation of theory and testable hypothesis
4. design the study (i.e., research design, operational definitions of IV/DV,
etc.)
5. run the study (i.e., data collection)
6. analyze the data (you will learn many techniques in this course)
7. report the findings (you will learn how to write a research report in this
course)
8 3 GENERAL RESEARCH DESIGNS
• 1. “true” experimental design

• Random assignment
• Determines the causation of a behavior by recording the data under carefully controlled conditions,
mostly in laboratory
• 2. quasi-experimental design
• Experiments without random assignment
• More will be covered in the following lectures
• 3. correlational design
• Makes prediction of a behavior
• No causation can be made
• E.g., questionnaires/surveys…
9 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ALREADY……...
• Independent variable (IV)

• The variable you manipulate in a study .
• It’s the “cause”
• Dependent variable (DV)

• The variable you measure in a study
• It’s the “effect”
• Confounding variable (CV)

• The variables that may influence the accuracy of DV
• Confounding variables must be controlled carefully, usually by random assignment
• *new*: Continuous vs. Discrete variables

10 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW
ALREADY…..
• Operational definition of variables

• A good operational definition of the IV must clearly separate
levels/groups/experimental conditions
• E.g., What happens in the experimental group (special treatment) vs. what
happens in the control group (placebo treatment)?
• A good operational definition of the DV must be quantifiable (it must produce numbers
for us to work with)
• E.g., DV: Reading speed (how many seconds the subject take to read a 30-word
English passage)
• E.g., DV: Facial attractiveness (rate the face by a 10 point scale, 1: least
attractive; 10: most attractive)
11 NEW STUFF
• Validity of measuring a variable

• Whether you are actually measuring what you want to measure
• E.g., measuring Intelligence
• Reliability of measuring a variable

• Whether the measurements of a variable is replicable (get the same
number even though you measure the event at different times)
• Consistency of a measurement
• E.g., test-retest reliability
12 NEW STUFF
• Internal validity
• The extent to which a causal conclusion is assured
• Achieved through random assignment and good experimental designs (i.e., all
confounding variables are controlled)
• External validity
• The extent to which the findings of a research study (from a sample) can be generalized to
other people (in the population) and situations.
• Generalizability
• Achieved by getting a representative sample (e.g., via random sampling)
-numbers obtained from samples are “statistics”
-numbers obtained from the population are “parameters”
-parameter are almost impossible to get. They must be estimated or inferred based on
statistics.
• Achieved through conducting the studies in more real and natural settings.
13 CONCLUSION
• In the first 4 lectures, you will learn something really

fundamental, important yet boring…
• From lecture 5 onwards, you will start to learn REAL data

analysis techniques

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• Why do psychology students need to learn statistics

• The research process

• “I really hate math, therefore I hate stats too” or “ I am bad

• “I choose psychology as my major because I want to learn how to read others’

• Pop psychology vs. academic psychology

• Academic psychology is a SCIENTIFIC discipline that studies the human psyche

• Everything must be QUANTIFIABLE (numbers!)

• Science only accounts for testable problems and must be falsifiable

• 1. “true” experimental design

• Independent variable (IV)

• Dependent variable (DV)

• Confounding variable (CV)

• *new*: Continuous vs. Discrete variables

• Operational definition of variables

• Validity of measuring a variable

• Reliability of measuring a variable

• In the first 4 lectures, you will learn something really

• From lecture 5 onwards, you will start to learn REAL data

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• new: Continuous vs. Discrete variables