Friday 21 October 2011

What I think about Quasi experiments...

A Quasi experiment is an experimental method that uses lab type controls but makes use of ready existing Independat Variables.

Quasi methods are incredibly useful in the fact that they can aviod ethical concerns, say if the variable that you wanted to measure could otherwise harm the participants.

Examples include smoking, drinking or any habit forming activity as well as other things such as someoe who has had a stroke or an operation that could otherwise alter there normal being.

An example of the Quasi method could be the functions of the left and right hemisphere of the brains when the corpus callossum (not sure if thats the proper spelling) is severed. This connective tissue is only cut when the person who has had the operation has suffered severe seizures to prevent it passig from one hemisphere to the other...

Sperry (yeah A level study here) tried to understand 'lateralisation of function' in the brain by using these split brain patients. He used methods that included showing to images, one either side of the screen on a moniter, that appeared for one tenth of a second to see what parts of the brain couldcomprehend language etc. as well as a tactile task were each side of the brain was, in essence told to find a certain object. Funnily with the tactile task the hands seemed to operate completely individual from one another.. If one hand came across the object the other hand searched for it ignored the fact entirely!

Yeah I could go on about that because it is a really interesting study but it is just my evidence!

The point is Quasi experiments are useful because like ive said you couldnt walk up to someone on the street and cut their brain in half for your research purposes.

What do you think is the most useful study method?

Friday 14 October 2011

Maybe Ethics :D

     Hey Mutha Blogga's, now I genuinly dont know what to write about but I'm going to give it a shot.

     Ethics in research are probably one of the largest factors to consider when thinking about designing a study. Its no good saying 'I'm going to study the effects of getting hit by a car on emotion' and asking for volunteers. Just no one will apply, unless theyre a little crazy anyway... The ammount of ethical considerations are now so important that they do govern what can and cant be done! I'll reduce the topic a little now though and discuss the 'debrief'.

     To me, debriefing your participats is one of the biggies in the ethical consideration world. If you coduct an experiment and dont give them the full picture at the end there could be a lot of wonder, confusion or even stress as to what they just took part in, especially if the experiment requires you to go the extra mile in terms of performing certain tasks. (Milgrams study into authorities effect on obedience) http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps01.html

     If the participants in Milgrams study were left to believe they had seriously injured or possibly killed another person who knows what damage could have been caused to their mental state. What do you think is the most important ethical consideration in psychology?
(Yeahh thats right I just a question to generate debate)

peace out

Friday 7 October 2011

Reliabilty of Case Studies

Okay, hey guys, Im going to attempt to talk about the reliability of case studies so bare with me if I completely miss the idea. The thing about case studies is they generally focus on an individual or specific group of people for a long period of time, (or at least A level has shown me that) so we could easily question the reliability of most case studies as chances are because its an individual you study the findings you gain are also tailored to that individual. For example, going back to A level, Thigpen and Cleckley conducted therapy on a woman who looked for help for her blinding headaches and blackouts. After several suspect actions such as a letter that appeared to be written by two different people and an episode where 'Eve White' held her head in pain and returned upright with a completely different persona therapists concluded she had multiple personality disorder. Whilst Thigpen and Cleckley collected over 100 hours of information on the personalities some say people got too close to their patient. Other questionable data taken from this case study was the fact that they assigned a lead personality to take over completely but thats a different topic... We can question the reliability of this case study because as mentioned before only Eve White suffered from this particular MPD. We cant assume that everyone will go through exactly the same as what she went through. It could even be and should be said that some of the qualitative data collected by T and C was easily subjective. And that is the problem with case studies of this nature. We cant generalise findings and so clouding the reliability of the data gathered. That should make sense and yeah look forward to any comments :D