Day 20

Learning Targets: Students will be able to...

• Describe and analyze the elements of an experiment
• Define descriptive statistics and explain how they are used by behavioral scientists
• Compare and contrast research methods

OPENER:  What is the key to making a psychology study valuable to other people?

ACTIVITY #1:  

•Get with a partner

•Review each others’ daily questions

•Choose 2-3 that you think would make good research questions

•Once you have done that, write a preliminary hypothesis that attempts to answer that question.

A hypothesis is a tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables. It is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in a study.

For example, a study designed to look at the relationship between sleep deprivation and test performance might have a hypothesis that states, ”Sleep-deprived people will perform worse on a test than individuals who are not sleep deprived."

Your hypothesis should always explain what you expect to happen during the course of your experiment or research.

Remember, a hypothesis does not have to be correct. While the hypothesis predicts what the researchers expect to see, the goal of the research is to determine whether this EDUCATED guess is right or wrong.

Required elements in a hypothesis

        Can your hypothesis be tested?

        Does your hypothesis include independent and dependent variables?