Study sheet: Week 2

📋 Course Outline

1. Course Structure and Assessment
2. Psychology as a Science
3. Scientific Method and Hypotheses
4. Characteristics and Goals of Science
5. Research Ethics and Oversight
6. Ethical Research Practices
7. Research Integrity and Fraud
8. Transparency and Replication

📖 1. Course Structure and Assessment

★ Must-know

• The course assessment consists of a midterm quiz worth 50% and a final exam worth 50%.

Further detail

• HP1100 covers research methods in weeks 2–6 and statistics in weeks 8–13, with Dr Choo Rui Qi teaching research methods and A/P Olivia Choy teaching statistics.

📖 2. Psychology as a Science

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Science : a way of obtaining knowledge through objective observations

📝 Essential Points

• Psychology is a science that uses problem solving to move from theory to hypothesis testing.

💡 Memory Hook

Objective observation → theory → hypothesis testing

📖 3. Scientific Method and Hypotheses

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Hypothesis : a statement assumed to be true for the purpose of testing its validity
• Operational definition : states the precise meaning of a procedure or concept within an experiment by specifying what is measured

📝 Essential Points

• 🔄 The scientific method proceeds through these stages:
  1. Research question
  2. Research hypothesis
  3. Study design
  4. Data collection
  5. Data analysis
  6. Report

💡 Memory Hook

Question → hypothesis → design → data → analysis → report

📖 4. Characteristics and Goals of Science

★ Must-know

• Scientific knowledge is empirical and objective because it is verifiable through direct observation or experience and can objectively report a subjective experience.

• Scientific knowledge is self-correcting, progressive, and tentative because new evidence can correct previous beliefs and bring knowledge increasingly closer to the truth.

• The goals of science are to:

  • develop theories
  • describe phenomena
  • search for causes
  • formulate falsifiable explanations

Further detail

• Science seeks parsimonious explanations, meaning the simplest possible explanation, and is concerned with theory and the question of why phenomena occur.

💡 Memory Hook

E-SPT: Empirical, Self-correcting, Parsimonious, Theory-focused

📖 5. Research Ethics and Oversight

★ Must-know

• The American Psychological Association provides ethical principles and a code of conduct for psychologists, while an Institutional Review Board ensures that studies have scientific merit and present as little risk as possible.

• The Belmont Report identifies three core principles:

  • respect for persons
  • beneficence
  • justice

Further detail

• The Singapore Human Biomedical Research Act is a legal framework relevant to human biomedical research in Singapore.

💡 Memory Hook

RBBJ: Respect, Beneficence, Belmont principles, Justice

📖 6. Ethical Research Practices

★ Must-know

• Researchers must obtain informed consent by explaining research procedures, potential incentives, and risks, while ensuring willing participation and the right to withdraw.

• Deception may be used when participants need to remain naïve to the research hypothesis, but researchers must explain the study as soon as possible, answer questions, remove misconceptions, and assess whether the deception was successful.

• Researchers must avoid plagiarism, correct significant errors when discovered, and never fabricate data.

Further detail

📌 Animal researchers must minimize discomfort, infection, illness, and pain and treat animals humanely in conjunction with research goals.

💡 Memory Hook

Informed participation versus coercion; disclosure versus deception

📖 7. Research Integrity and Fraud

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Garden of forking paths : Gelman & Loken, 2014 — occurs when researchers choose one of multiple ways of analysing data, increasing the false-positive rate
• P-hacking : repeatedly adding or removing variables or data points after seeing results until a significant p-value is obtained
• HARKing : hypothesising after the results are known

📝 Essential Points

• Fraudulent or questionable research practices can lead to retractions, and research integrity organizations such as NTU's Research Integrity Office address research misconduct.

💡 Memory Hook

Cherry-picking → false positives → irreproducible findings

📖 8. Transparency and Replication

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Preregistration : documents hypotheses, methods, and planned analyses before a study is conducted and prevents researchers from replacing a planned variable with a significant alternative after seeing results
• Replication : follows a previous study's methodology and repeats the procedure to determine whether similar results are obtained

★ Must-know

📌 Open research practice requires researchers to share exact methodology, data such as Excel sheets, and other documentation so that others can test and replicate the findings.

Further detail

• Scientific transparency requires researchers to report everything they hypothesised and found and to document changes in protocol.

💡 Memory Hook

Preregister → document → share → replicate