Term Paper 2012

LAPD FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE – Fall 2009

Goals of Psychological Science:

* Description of behavior and the mind

Relies on identifying reliable patterns in behavior or thought. This provides material for later efforts to explain and predict psychological events.

* Prediction of behavior and thought

Using psychological descriptions to acknowledge reliable relationships between variables.

* Explanation of formulation of models of the mind

Specification of why certain relationships are observed and predicted between variables (that is, a theory is developed to account for the relationship).

* Application of these models for influencing behavior and thought.

Using knowledge of psychological principles to change behavior and influence thought

Theory/Hypothesis

 One-tailed vs. two-tailed hypothesis

A one-tailed test looks for an increase or decrease in the parameter whereas a two-tailed test looks for any change in the parameter (which can be any change- increase or decrease)

Two Tailed: If you are using a significance level of 0.05, a two-tailed test allots half of your alpha to testing the statistical significance in one direction and half of your alpha to testing statistical significance in the other direction.  This means that .025 is in each tail of the distribution of your test statistic. When using a two-tailed test, regardless of the direction of the relationship you hypothesize, you are testing for the possibility of the relationship in both directions.

One Tailed: If you are using a significance level of .05, a one-tailed test allots all of your alpha to testing the statistical significance in the one direction of interest.  This means that .05 is in one tail of the distribution of your test statistic. When using a one-tailed test, you are testing for the possibility of the relationship in one direction and completely disregarding the possibility of a relationship in the other direction. 

 Induction vs. Deduction...