hello students and welcome back to our next lesson in our as psychology course today we'll be looking at using different research methods so conducting research in the field of psychology there are lots and lots of different experiments going on all the time and we're going to have to be using different sorts of methods and techniques in order to get the um results that we want from these different experiments so there's going to be different ways to collect the data and each of these different sort of methods and techniques are called research methods and they're going to have their advantages and disadvantages so first we'll start with a laboratory or a lab experiment and this is an investigation in a controlled environment where there is a direct manipulation of the variables so it's going to measure the dependent variable versus the independent variable its advantages are that you can easily control all the variables because you are in a controlled environment where only you manipulate everything going on as a result there's going to be sort of less errors and confounding variables which you can then control the controlled conditions also make it more replicable and more valid so you can conduct the experiment many times in order to try and get an average and you should always get the same result because you are in a controlled environment also it is much easier to decipher what the cause and the effect was because there are no other sort of EX strenuous or confounding variables that could mess with what the um cause and effect really is however it does has its disadvantages the first one being that it lacks ecological validity and what this means is that um ecological validity relates to really how um like a real life situation it is and because it isn't really a true reflection of what uh real life would be we would call that um that it lacks mundane realism and as a result what we can you know what we conduct in a lab may not really be the same things that would happen in the real world so as a result the sort of results that we get from the experiment may not be as valid as it would be if we were to conduct them in the real world where we do have a bunch of confounding variables that would impact the effect of whatever we're investigating another disadvantage is that if people are tested in a lab there may be subject to things we call demand characteristics and evaluation apprehension now what this means is that when people are being tested they may behave differently or do things differently and knocked out act the same because they know they being tested so as a result because people aren't acting as their C this may not give a true indication of results to what really you know was going to be investigating what the results should be next up we have a field experiment this sort of contrasts from a lab experiment because instead of being in a controlled environment it is in a natural environment where an independent variable is manipulated to see its effect on the dependent variable and of course we can pretty much um take a look at the lab experiment exper advantages disadvantages and contrast them its advantages are that it has high ecological validity less evaluation apprehension and demand characteristics however its disadvantages are that it is hard to control variables people may not give informed consent and it is harder to replicate so pretty much the opposite to what a lab experiment really is next up we have a natural quasi experiment and this is the study of effects of a natural event where the IND dependent variable is uh sort of naturally manipulated so an example of a natural quasi event may be the study of the impact on stress or anxiety of people following a volcanic eruption so its main advantage is that it's going to have extremely high ecological validity because it is sort of natural observation in a natural event with naturally in sort of manipulated variables so if you're going to take one word away from all this explanation it is the word natural it is very very has very high ecological validity also as the research has very little involvement there are going to be much fewer demand characteristics and evaluation apprehension so it kind of seems as advantages are exactly the same as a field study so as a result we can you know in our minds using sort of what we've learned so far from the field experiment also decipher that the disadvantages are that it's hard to replicate and harder to control the variables and there may be very many confounding or extren variables which impact the sort of experiment confounding variables and extren variables be variables which we have not accounted for in the first place and you can't really control so for example like the time of day also the disadv a disadvantage is that there are few opportunities to study these natural events so we'll know that a volcanic eruption doesn't come along all that often so as a result it's going to be hard to check sort of or recond these experiments again and again another research method is correlational analysis and this is a technique to see if a dependent variable and an independent variable are associated and then it also measures the strength so if you imagine a sort of scatter graph that is what correlational analysis is really for so drawing up the scatter graph is really correlational analysis so the relationship can be casual which means that the there is a definite link between one a variable and another it can be left a chance which means by some sort of Lucky outcome there is an actual relationship when perhaps there may not have been or the relationship can be due to a confounding variable which means that an sort of anomalous or strenuous variable out there has made there be a correlation when really there shouldn't be in the first place so it of course is going to have its advantages and disadvantages the main advantage being that it allows to measure the strength of the correlation and Trends can lead to research in a new sort of different project so if we find out that there is a correlation between uh number of ice cream sales and number of sort of tuberculosis cases there may be a relationship between the two so there will be more research projects in order to try and see if sort of tuberculosis is linked towards the distribution of ice cream which you know sounds uh crazy which we'll probably know but it's just an example okay next up we have its disadvantages and one of them is that it doesn't show the effect of confounding variables so as a result if there is a confounding variable it's not going to show how the confounding variable actually affected the correlation similarly we can't tell which variable will cause which so whether it's the dependent variable which influenced the independent or vice versa and also it doesn't State whether the relationship um whether the chance relationship that is is caused by the correlation whether it was just potluck or whether you know the chance relationship may actually be casual but we actually you know haven't conducted enough research to find out if it actually is next up we have naturalistic observation and what this is is that it's observing behavior in a natural setting where the researcher does not influence um the behavior at all so this can be a disclosed study of naturalistic observation and this is where the researcher reveals himself or herself to the group or an undisclosed um sort of naturalistic observation where the researcher will remain hidden and observe everyone just from a remote area where they won't be able to tell that he or she is watching the advantages are that it has high ecological validity because people will be in a natural setting and also if undisclosed there will be no demand characteristics so it pretty much reflects the real life situation and should give good results however the disadvantage are is that if it is um sort of dis closed there are definitely demand characteristics and evaluation apprehension so people will act differently and you won't get the results you wanted also it is hard to replicate because in a natural setting things are going to change every time you study it and also there is such thing called Observer Bias which means the person that is observing may have sort of different subjective um sort of ideas of what the behavior is to another psychologist for example so as a result that difference in views is called Observer bias and their sort of clash of sort of observations may lead to invalid results if one of them sort of is wrong and the other one is right and finally it is hard to control the variables because of course it is in a natural setting so so far we've looked at quite a few of these cases already and you may have sort of observed that a lot of the disadvantages and advantages are very similar now you could probably draw links between them those that are in a natural environment in a natural setting are going to have high Lo eological validity and I'm going to be hard to control the variables and hard to replicate Etc so if you're ever you know stuck on the exam just think natural settings what can I gather from this and just WR away you should be able to pick up the marks that you need to you know get full marks on that question next up we have controlled observation and this is basically observing behavior in a natural environment but the researcher can manipulate the effects of the situation so it's kind of like the naturalistic observation but the researcher then can change the sort of what's going on in the people's lives so again notice how it is a natural environment so of course we're going to know from our advantages and disadvantages there's going to be high ecological validity and harder to control the variables however because it is a controlled observation it's going to be a lot easier to replicate since the variables are going to be res um sort of controlled yourself and also because the setting is going to be controlled to a certain degree it is easier for the researcher to focus on the Behavior because he's going to tell how they react to whatever aspects are being manipulated similarly the uh disadvantages are a lot similar to that of natural observation and that is that there is going to be observed bias and if um undisclosed there may be demand characteristics and evaluation apprehension also okay so next up we have participant observation and what this is this is uh observing behavior from a natural setting where the researcher joins in the group for their everyday life so of course see how it says natural setting there is going to be high ecological validity you know it's not going to lack mundane realism and it's going to be easier to focus the behavior if the Observer is in the group however this is going to have a lot of disadvantages because there is no informed consent it will be very hard to replicate since it is an observational uh method it's going there's going to be Observer Bias and the presence of the researcher May influence the results because the researcher will in fact be um disclosed so he's going so he or she is going to show to the group that he's going to be or she's going to be there and then as a result they're going to act differently okay next up we have questionnaires and this is a list of pre-written questions which a participant will answer so the you can probably think of these Advantage advantages yourself it's fast cheap easy to replicate and the closed questions can be easily analyzed and put into groups categorically and disadvantages are that there's going to be a low response rate Clos questions are going to give limited responses there can be you know evaluation apprehension and social D durability effects where people answer incorrectly just to make themselves look good and also if you do write a questionnaire with open questions those are going to be hard to categorize and analyze so questionnaire is pretty straightforward you could probably think of these yourself and just right away without even having to study it okay the structured interview is a little more comp complicated and this is a conversation between the participant and the researcher where fixed questions are asked in a particular order face to face so the advantages are that it will be fast cheap and easy to replicate just like a questionnaire and the researcher can easily focus on what he or she would like to see however the disadvantages are that the closed questions will give limited responses there can be social desirability effect and evaluation apprehension so pretty much exactly the same as questionnaires however um because it is a structured interview the researcher can focus on what he or she will want to pretty much take from the interview themselves okay and finally we have unstructured interviews and this is a conversation between the researcher and their participant with no fixed questions in no particular order so this will provide qualitative data which is going to be in much more detail and easier to draw conclusions from but it will be harder to categorize and also it can develop a into clearer answers with more profound meaning so the researcher can have a better idea of what the answers to the questions are really going to be you know meaning however the disadvantages are that there is going to be demand characteristics it is going to be hard to compare and hard to replicate because there will be qualitative data and also investigators May manipulate the answers if they are sort of um answering sort of asking the questions and writing down the answers there may be some sort of influential factor which causes the researcher or sort of Observer to then change what the answers really were okay so here are some questions what I'd like you to do is to pause the video and answer these I would advise you to hide your note so you can just do this from memory and once you ready um hit the play button and see how many of these questions you have gotten right okay so here are the answers if you did get all of them right congratul ations I would advise you to move on to the next uh video but if not I would advise you to just go over your notes or rewind so that you can check out what you have done wrong so you can get them right for your next test okay so this is the end of the lesson next lesson we will be looking at research design if you are studying any other a level um sort of subjects i' advise you to check out the channel and hopefully there you can find out the revision material you need in order to get your grades that you really want to get in them for the exams at the end of the year so until then thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time