Question | Answer |
What is a variable | any observation of a physical, attitudinal or behavioral characteristic that can take on values |
What is a discrete observation | can take on only specific values--whole #-- no other values can exist between these numbers |
What is a continuous observation | can take on a full range of values--number out several decimal places-- an infinite number of potential values exists |
What is nominal variables | a variable used for observations that have categories or names as their values |
What is an ordinal variable | a variable used for observations that have rankings such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd... |
What is an interval variable | a variable used for observations that have numbers as their values and the distance or interval between pairs of consecutive numbers is assumed to be equal |
What is a ratio variable | a variable that meets criteria for an interval variable but also has a meaningful zero point |
What is a scale variable | A variable that meets the criteria for an interval or a ratio variable |
What is a level | a discrete value or condition that a variable can take on |
What is an independent variable | a variable that we either manipulate or observe to determine its effects on the dependent variable |
What is a good variable | reliable and complete |
what is a dependent variable | the outcome variable that we hypothesize to be related to or caused by changes in the independent variable |
What is a confounding variable | any variable systematically varies with the independent variable so that we cannot logically determine which variable is at work also called a confound |
What is reliability | Refers to the consistency of a measure |
What is validity | the extent to which a test actually measures what was intended to measure |
What is hypothesis testing | the process of drawing conclusions about whether a particular relation between variables is supported by the evidence |
What is operational definition | specifies the operations or procedures used to measure or manipulate a variable |
What is correlation | an association between two or more variables |
What is an experiment | a study in participants are randomly assigned to a condition or level of one or more independent variables which par |
What is a random assignment | every participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any group or experimental condition in the study |
What is an between--groups research design | participants experience one, and only one ,level of the independent variable |
What is a within--groups research design | the different levels of the independent variable are experienced by all participants in the study also called a repeated- measure research design |