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- The only way to establish cause-and-effect relationships is by carrying out an experiment.
- The experimenter first must define a hypothesis for the experiment to test.
- It is important to operationalize the hypothesis by conceptualizing it in a way that could be tested.
- In a formal experiment, we change one variable and observe its effect on other aspects of the situation.
- The change that an experimenter deliberately produces in a situation is called the experimental manipulation.
- The independent variable is the variable that is manipulated by an experimenter.
- The dependent variable changes as a result of the independent variable.
- At least two groups need to be compared.
- One group will receive some special treatment, and they are called the experimental group.
- The other group will receive either no treatment or a different treatment, and they are called the control group.
- To make the experiment valid, the researchers need to randomly assign participants to receive a particular treatment.
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