Research Procedures (AQA GCSE Psychology)

• Standardisation is the term used to describe the identical procedure set up in an experiment (or the questions used in self-report measures) across all conditions/participants which involves: 
  • Instructions given to the participants
  • Briefing before the procedure (including the consent form) and debriefing after the procedure has taken place 
  • Number of participants per condition e.g. in an experiment with a sample size of 40, the researcher would ensure that there were 20 participants per condition
  • Timings: each condition of the IV should run for the same amount of time e.g. 15 minutes for condition A; and 15 minutes for condition B (unless one of the conditions includes a time delay)
  • Materials: identical materials must be used, the only exception being if the materials need to change for the IV to be implemented e.g. condition A involves learning a poem underwater and condition B involves learning a different poem on land (a repeated measures design)
• Implementing standardisation allows the research to be replicated and, thus, reliable

Yuki et al.'s (2007) emoticon study used a standardised procedure.

• Randomisation refers to the deliberate avoidance of bias on the part of the researcher to keep the research as objective as possible:
  • Participants are randomly assigned to one condition of the IV e.g. by selecting names at random out of a hat
  • Random allocation to condition ensures that no bias has intruded over which participants take part in which condition
  • If the procedure involves a list of words, digits or images presented to participants then the list must be decided randomly to avoid researcher bias
  • Due to the nature of randomness one condition of the IV may result in a group of all female participants or a word list may have words beginning with the same letter appearing one after the other at the start of the list
• Due to the nature of a repeated measures design, where participants experience all conditions of the IV, it is not possible to to randomly assign participants to a condition so to ensure a degree of control over the procedure the researcher should use counterbalancing:
  • Counterbalancing can be used to avoid order effects: 
    • The researcher randomly allocates half the participants to complete the conditions in one order: Condition A followed by Condition B
    • The other half of the participants complete Condition B followed by Condition A

• Extraneous variables are usually controlled so they have the same effect across all conditions, which should stop them from affecting the DV, for example:
  • time of day: run the experiment at midday which should hopefully be a neutral time for everyone
  • temperature: ensure the experimental space has an ambient temperature 
  • mood: treat participants in a friendly but neutral way, to avoid adding to any existing moods
• If extraneous variables are not controlled then they can become confounding variables 
• Confounding variables can affect the DV and impact the outcome of the research

Evaluation of procedures used in research

Strengths

• The greatest strength of the procedures described above is that they ensure reliability, bringing the research as close as possible to demonstrating a cause-effect relationship between the IV and DV
• Being able to replicate a study means that other researchers can use the procedure to keep testing the theory (e.g. Asch’s conformity study has been replicated many times over the years in several different countries)

Weaknesses

• Where there is high control there tends to be low validity, particularly ecological validity
• The artificial context and tasks involved in high-control research could give rise to demand characteristics which is another threat to validity