How is it that psychologists can make inferences about unmeasurably large populations based on measurements taken...

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How is it that psychologists can make inferences aboutunmeasurably large populations based on measurements taken fromrelatively small samples of only thirty people?

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Psychologists agree that if their ideas and theories about human behaviour are to be taken seriously they must be backed up by data However the research of different psychologists is designed with different goals in mind and the different goals require different approaches These varying approaches are known as research designs A research design is the specific method a researcher uses to collect analyze and interpret data Psychologists use three major types of research designs in their research and each provides an essential avenue for scientific investigation 1 Descriptive research is research designed to provide a snapshot of the current state of affairs 2 Correlational research is research designed to discover relationships among variables and to allow the prediction of future events from present knowledge 3 Experimental research is research in which initial equivalence among research participants in more than one group is created followed by a manipulation of a given experience for these groups and a measurement of the influence of the manipulation on the whole Population The goal of experimental research design is to provide more definitive conclusions about the causal relationships among the variables in the research hypothesis than is available from correlational designs In an experimental research design the variables of interest are called the independent variable or variables and the dependent variable The independent See Answer

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