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Selecting Research Participants
Among the very practical aspects of conducting research, researchers must first decide how they will select the research participants.
As you recall, most research involves sampling research participants from a of interest. |
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To draw a sample from a population, researchers use either a sampling technique or a nonprobability sampling technique. |
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Indeed, this is an important decision, because the technique that is used has important implications for the results of the studies. |
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Manipulating the Independent Variable
In addition to deciding which sampling technique to use, researchers must decide the context in which the independent and dependent variables will be introduced.
This is called the stage. |
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Setting the stage involves providing the participants with the consent information and providing participants the for experiment is being done. |
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Sometimes, the rationale is completely truthful, although rarely will researchers tell the actual hypothesis. |
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Exactly how the independent variable is manipulated depends on the variable itself, the cost, the practicality, and the of the procedures being considered. |
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Usually, researchers are able to manipulate a variable with relative simplicity, called a manipulation. |
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manipulations manipulate variables with and stimulus presentations. |
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Another way to manipulate the independent variable is called a manipulation ore event manipulation. This type of manipulation involves staging events during the experiment. |
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Sometimes, this requires the use of an accomplice, called a . |
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Measuring the Dependent Variable
How to measure the dependent variable is another decision researchers must make.
The dependent variable in most experiments is one of types of measures: measures, physiological measures, and behavioral measures. |
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Regardless of the type of measures used, the dependent variable should be enough to detect differences between groups. |
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This issue is especially important when measuring human . |
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This is because a effect can occur if a task is so easy that everyone does well regardless of the conditions manipulated by the independent variable. |
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Likewise, the opposite may happen and result in a effect. |
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Additional Controls
In addition to these issues, additional control procedures are necessary to control for participant and experimenter . |
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Although researchers do not want to inform participants about the specific hypotheses or exact purposes of their research, a feature of an experiment might inform participants of the hypothesis or of the study. |
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This creates the problem of characteristics because may try to either help confirm the hypothesis. |
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One way to control for characteristics is to make participants think the experiment is studying one thing when actually it is studying something else. |
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A story or items on a questionnaire are two ways to control for demand characteristics. |
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Also, in any investigation on the effects of drugs or other medications, a researcher will also use a group to control for expectations. |
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The experimenter’s expectations must also be controlled because their expectations can the results. |
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The term for this is bias and it can occur when experimenters that know the conditions the participants are in or when experimenters record the behaviors of participants. |
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Analyzing and Interpreting Results, Communicating Research to Others
When the decisions are made and the study has been run, it is then time to the data and the results.
The final step is to write the report and communicate the findings to others. |
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Communicating the findings is done through articles or as papers read at meetings. |
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