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Psy 305 Final Paper

Good Essays

Part 1: Please respond to each question briefly and concisely, but as completely as you can.
What is (are) the purpose(s) of research? Explain your answer.
Research allows us to better understand what is unknown, how a human thinks, why a dog barks when they hear a stranger approaching or that the earth is round and not flat. Research allows us to find answers to the questions we have. Research attempts to both understand and define. There are three kinds of research; Explanatory; Exploratory and Descriptive research. Explanatory, Exploratory and Descriptive research define what research is; Research is the attempt to explain, explore and describe (Neuman, 2006, 24).
Identify the three (3) formal research designs and specify the nature …show more content…

Why is it important? In which section of a research proposal do we identify the operational definitions of variables?
An operational definition of a variable is the way in which ‘something’ will be measured in said study. It is important because it distinguishes research from one another; for example two researchers may be studying the same exact thing but by having a different operational definition of the variable they are now conducting two completely different studies. The operational definition of a variable is identified in the research proposal; usually within the first couple of sentences of the research purpose. Identify and define the four scales of “Natural Measurement”. How are they interrelated? How do they relate to inferential (causal) statistics? Is there a preferred level of measurement? Why or why not?
Nominal-Level: Indicates the levels in between categories (Ex: Religions) (Neuman, 2006, 199).
Ordinal-Level: The differences and the ability to rank them.
Interval-Level: Indicates the levels between categories, ranks them and specifies the amount between each rank; does not have a true zero (Ex: IQ …show more content…

Sensitivity: The ability for the scale to measure both the response and stimuli without being affected.
It is possible for a measure to have one and not all of the above criteria’s. If it lacks one of the measurements the chances of the study/research lacking credibility are higher.
What is different about attitude measurement compared to other phenomena we might study? What does this require us to do differently in defining variables compared to the measurement of other phenomena? Is there any characteristic of the survey method that makes this problem easier to overcome?
Attitude measurement is when a research is studying the reaction of participants to a certain phenomena; while when studying a phenomena you are attempting to explore and describe it. When measuring a phenomena the variables are clear and known while with attitude measurement they are not. In order to overcome the lack of control over the variable within attitude measurements you can create a clear responses that respondents choose from (Ex: unsatisfactory, satisfactory,

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