Intro and Research

The textbook starts with an overview of the major perspectives in psychology.  Visit this site to see how each perspective views the factors that affect weight loss.  (Click the + signs for more content.)

I. Description

A.     Survey 

B.     Case Study

C.    Naturalistic Observation

Hawthorne effect 

II. Correlations

 Play with scatterplots to learn more about correlations
 Explore correlations with StateStats

A.     Types 

1.      positive

2.      negative  

B.     Possible Relationships

III. Experiments

A.     Components

1.      Hypothesis = Testable statement.

2.      Independent variable (cause)  

"What groups are being compared?"

Be wary of confounding variables.

3.      Dependent variable (effect) -- The DV depends on the independent variable.

"On what are they being compared?"

4.      Random Assignment

B.     Examples