Hello beautiful people!!
We are here to finish our discussion of
the scientific method.
ok so we've already talked about the
different steps.  We said that all
research begins with what?
That's right! A question. Then after we
 determined our question and we
have operationalized the variables-- right, 
to OPERATIONALIZE is to define, make
narrow, specific and measurable the
variable of interest--we operationalized
it. Then after we've done those two
things,  then we look at the social
significance and we explain why a
particular research study is necessary
or important. Then we review the
literature--whatever others have said about it.
We moved from the review of the
literature that helps us to form our
hypothesis to actually forming it, and
remember we set a hypothesis is not an
educated guess.  I mean that was good
enough for high school but our college
definition is that a HYPOTHESIS is a
speculative statement about the
relationship between two or more
variables.
ok and we defined variable. INDEPENDENT= IMPACT and DEPENDENT is the OUTCOME.   
impact the dependent is the outcome
alright and we said that it's easier to
start with the outcome.
What is the outcome? We said let's look
at grade and dr. Stewart Thomas' class
That's the outcome. And what impacts that? Do you come,  do you study and do well on
the test,
do you do your homework, do you have a
good out attitude?
These are your INDEPENDENT variables
because they IMPACT the outcome which is
the dependent variable which is your
grade in the class.  Then we moved to
talking about research design right and
in research design
we said well how are you going to
collect the data that you need to
analyze? Are you going to do a survey and
we said with SURVEYS there are the
QUESTIONNAIRES which have the benefit of
being low-cost, able to be distributed
to many people,  and confidential so that
you might get a more accurate answer as
people reveal information about their
private lives or their true attitudes. On
the other hand you might want to do a
and INTERVIEW in which you sit with an
interviewer and answer the questions. 
Now one of the benefits is that you get
some really in-depth information but one
of the costs is that interviews can be
very expensive. If you hire a graduate
student you might pay forty dollars. If you
hire someone with a doctorate you can
expect to pay over a hundred dollars an
hour.
ok so those are the things with the
survey
oh and the other thing we talked about
with the survey is that we have to be
careful about the SOCIAL DESIRABILITY EFFECT right where people change their
answers to what they think is socially
acceptable. So if you ask somebody a
question about maybe an attitude
do they have a certain prejudice and
they may not want to admit that they
have a certain prejudice so there's that
Oh no!  I'm not prejudiced! but they really
are but they may not want to tell you
that because it's not socially
acceptable. You may ask them, "How often do
you watch porn?"  Watch porn?!
I don't watch porn! But then they
actually do and so if they're not
telling you what is the true answer
because they're worried about what you
as the interviewer are going to think
about them then that is what we call the
social desirability effect.
Then we looked at another
type of research design which is that of
the OBSERVATON. Now we said that there are
primarily two types of observation research. We
have PARTICIPANT observation in which
people actually go and you know join
right in with the people that they're
studying ok and we talked about William
Whythe's  classic study of the street corner
society where he went and lived with
people in a neighborhood for four years
to see what life was like for them,  and
one of the great things about this type
of research is that you really gain the
trust over time of the people that
you're studying put a downside is that
you might lose your objectivity because
again when we look at the definition of
scientific method we see that the
scientific method is a systematic
organized series of steps that ensures
what maximum objectivity
ok maximum objectivity and consistency
and researching a social issue so you
know if you become close friends with
the people if you become so intertwined
in their lives
you may lose your objectivity and that
can bias your results now on the other
hand we looked at non-participant and
that's what you stand back and you're
like you just observe you are not
participating you are a non-participant
but we did find that one of the
downsides of this while you don't have
to worry about losing your objectivity
what you might lose is the authenticity
of the people because what do people do
when they know they're being a
curved they change their behavior yes
they do they change their behavior and
this was observed at where that's right
you remember the HAWTHORNE  corporation
where researchers were coming in making
different adjustments to variables to
see what they could do to increase
productivity and they found that no
matter what kind of adjustment they made
productivity went up
why was that because people know they
were being watched and we tend to put on
our best behavior when we're being
watched and that's exactly what happened
people change because they were being
watched. Then we looked at experiments
ok and we looked at the classic type of
experiment in which you have two groups.
One group which is referred to as the
EXPERIMENTAL group and this is the group
that is exposed to the independent
variable the thing that you're testing
and then the other group which is called
the CONTROL group and the control group
is the comparison group so it's not
exposed so let's say that you have two
groups and i'm wanting to know whether
or not this premarital counseling
program that I've developed is effective
so i have 20 couples that are engaged to
be married 10 of them go through my
wonderfully designed
premarital counseling program. The
other 10 do not and then what we do is
we measure them at let's say five years
to see whether the 10 who went through
the program have more stable
relationships than the 10 who didn't
maybe these ten who went through the
program are still married you know and
these and we look at the marriage rate
of these so here's what we might find
that those who went through the
wonderful three merrill program that i
developed ok the counseling program they
may be more stable they may report
greater happiness and more marital
satisfaction and less divorce
maybe our program worked we may find
that there's no difference than our
comparison group and that this group
that went through the program is no
different than the group that didn't we
might need to work on our premarital
counseling program just a bit there and
we may find that old hear those who went
through the premarital program actually
have higher rates of divorce their
marriages are terrible
they think that this is the worst thing
that they ever did when they attributed
it to the premarital program that they
went through in which case we say we've
got to start all over
ok because obviously that premarital
program I wasn't very helpful
here's the thing to keep in mind when
we're dealing with experiments and
people it's very hard to have a
controlled experiment when we're dealing
with human beings because they're just
how many variables that cannot be you
know control
I mean maybe these people you know had
better marriages because they just had
more Skills to begin with you know it's
really kinda hard to measure that or
maybe you know their age wasn't
actor or maybe certain other things
played a role that it's just hard to
control when you're dealing with human
beings
ok now this gets us to the next point
that i made which was to distinguish
between a CONTROL GROUP which is a
COMPARISON GROUP used in an experiment and
the CONTROL VARIABLE which is a variable
that held constant. So the example that I
used earlier was saying let's try to
understand why women make less money and
so what we said is will hold constant
years of education meaning that that
would be a control variable so that men
and women were looking at men and women
with the same years of education the
same industry meaning the same type of
job
not one is in you know preschool
education and then the others in
engineering know we'll put them in the
same industry and the same years of it
experience and the only thing that will
be different
the only thing that will not be
controlled is gender and then we'll look
at the outcome the dependent variable
which is income and what we find is that
yes men earn more even when we control
or hold constant these other variables
years of its years of education industry
years of experience and maybe even
number of children the only one not
control or help constant or held the
same would be gender and that's how we
can conclude that
hey gender plays a role and how much we
get paid and as we've discussed in class
currently it's that women
earn about seventy cents excuse me
seventy-nine cents or eighty  on average for
every dollar that man makes and then in
our we're almost done here
so when we get to the conclusion we we
summarize we actually explain everything
that we have learned we put it all
together in this nice report which we
call our conclusion and some people
think that's it
that means we're done but it doesn't, Why?
because the only thing that the
conclusion does often is just raised
more questions okay so you know you you
write your conclusion and then you say
you know if this is last part you say
well now that we understand this and we
have discovered this through
I'm doing our study well it raises these
new questions and so those new questions
become the next research study that you
do if you look up certain researchers
you'll find that often their research
they may have written six articles
ok and all the articles are very similar
because they've just taken something
that they learned in this one and then
that became the idea for the new study
that's why i say that all research
begins and ends with a question.
All research begins and ends with a
question
all right now the last point that i want
to make is this: When we're doing our
research we must be ETHICAL.
ok we have to be ethical especially when
doing experiments we do not want to
repeat these in ZIMBARDO experience of
doing experiments that caused people to
feel stressed out and harmed and
psychologically damaged
ok so when we do experience
and experiment we do any type of
research that involves human subjects it
is our ethical duty and responsibility
to explain to them the purpose of the
study and how it might impact them and
to get their consent
we also need to take our research ideas
and run them through our institutional
review board IRB institutional review
board so every institution has one
amount that we do so we want to do any
type of experiment involving human
subjects we have to get that experiment
or we have to get that study rather we
have to get it approved by the
institutional review board (IRB) and we want
to make sure that our research is
reliable and valid. RELIABLE means that
if somebody else comes along and does it, 
they're going to get pretty consistent
results and valid means that were
measuring what we intend to measure so
for example if I wanted to do a test and
I wanted to see how intelligent you all
are my beautiful wonderful intelligent
students and i gave you a test an
intelligence test in a language that you
didn't speak that test is not going to
measure your intelligence it's going to
measure your proficiency in that
language which in this case will be zero
since you don't speak the language that
intelligence test would be invalid
because it does not measure what it was
intended to measure
however if i give you an intelligence
test in the language in which you are
most comfortable then we'll find that
the test is probably valid if it
actually is measuring your intelligence
ok so that's where it becomes important
to test and see
is my research valid is it reliable
is it ethical and haven't been approved
if we can say yes to all of those things
then we will go out and have a great
time studying our social world
thank you beautiful people for listening
to be Dr. Mica Stewart on the scientific
method.
