Introduction
Why Psychologists Use Statistics
From the Laboratory to the Real World
Once the researcher has collected the results, they must:
- Describe the results;
- Assess how reliable and meaningful they are;
- Explain the meaning of the results.
Introduction
Psychologists use descriptive statistics to summarize the data, and inferential statistics to determine how impressive the findings might be.
Glossary
Key Concepts Explained
Descriptive statistics summarize the data:
- Arithmetic mean is the average.
- Variance indicates how the scores are spread out around the mean.
Psychologists use inferential statistics to learn the impressiveness of the findings.
- Significance tests allow the researcher to determine if the results were simply due to chance.
- Statistically significant means that the result was extremely unlikely to have occurred by chance.
ActivitiesLinks
wwwlink: Introduction to descriptive statistics.
wwwlink: Everything you wanted to know about statistics.
Introduction
Trying to figure out what the findings really mean.
Glossary
Key Concepts Explained
Choosing the Best Explanation
If several explanations fit the facts equally well, more research will be needed to determine which is the best explanation.
Cross-sectional studies compares subjects of different ages at the same time.
Longitudinal studies follow subjects over a long period of time and periodically tests them.
Judging the Results Importance
A statistically significant result may have no practical importance, while a non significant finding may be worth further exploration.
Meta anlaysis is one way to combine the results from many studies to give a clearer picture of how much an effect a variable has across studies.Activities
Links
wwwlink: Pitfalls in Evaluating the Findings of research.