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Term Paper Handout #6 Note that I have limited the number of Internet references—largely for 2

reasons: The Internet does not subject items it “publishes” to peer review, as do

most journals—unless, of course, the Internet reference is a published article.

One should be familiar with the important search engines in one’s field—and PsycInfo is ours. Get on and get in!

Referencing online material (general form; Publication manual, 2001, p. 223 ): Online periodical: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (2000). Title of article. Title of

Periodical, XX, 123-134. Retrieved month day, year, from source. Online document:Author, A. A. (2000). Title of work. Retrieved month day, year, from

source.

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Psychology 1230: Psychology of

Adolescence

Don HartmannFall 2005

Lecture 6: Method I

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Discussion Topic #3

#3. Doping Adolescent Males. 4♀+1♂ I (Summary evaluation due on Monday, September 19th ). You might have read that males between their mid teens and mid twenties commit a disproportionate number of serious traffic violations and crimes against persons and property. You also might have read that testosterone is related to acting aggressively. What do you think of the proposition that the water in settings frequented by males of this age range should contain a testosterone-reducing drug?

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Discussion Topic #5

#4 Son in Puberty: Justice League I (Summary-Evaluation due on Wednesday, September 21st ): Assume that you had a son about to enter puberty. You are physically distant from him, and soon will be unable to correspond with him for some period of time. You are writing a letter to help him better deal with pubertal changes. Each discussant should write one long paragraph of this letter, and also comment on the paragraph of at least one of the other discussants. You are to write using a vocabulary that will be understood by your child and that will give them a positive attitude toward the changes they will experience. BE REAL!

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Discussion Topic #4

#5 Daughter-in-Puberty: Gypsy Mafia I (Summary Evaluation due on Tuesday, September 20th .) Assume that you have a daughter about to enter puberty. You are physically distant from her, and soon will be unable to correspond with her for some period of time. You are writing a letter to help her better deal with pubertal changes. Each discussant should write one long paragraph of this letter, and also comment on the paragraph of at least one of the other discussants. You are to write using a vocabulary that will be understood by your child and that will give them a positive attitude toward the changes they will experience. Be real!

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Discussion Topic #6

#6 Sex Rears it Ugly Head. Psyched I (Summary due Thursday, September 22). Some have argued that Freud was all wet because he focused too much on the role of sex in development. Do you think that he was “all wet” on this issue? You might address the following sub issues: What do you think about the importance of sex in our lives? What did Freud mean by sex? Feel free to comment on other discussant’s replies.

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WEB Discussion Process

Group #1 due #2 due #3 due #4 due #5 dueWhippets 09/12Hotties 09/134♀+1♂ 09/19GypsyMafia 09/20JusticeLeague 09/21Psyched 09/22

----------Note: Anyone can contribute to any WEB discussion; group members are

responsible to summarizing the discussion. The last day to contribute to any discussion is 3 days before the due date.

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Handout Summary

Handout WEB

Date Date 10, HO-Term Paper* 08/12 11. Lect. #2: Historical Perspect. 08/12 12. HO-Suppl. Proj. #1* 08/12 13. Lect. #3: Devel. Issues 08/15 14. HO-Completing a Film Review* 08/14 15. HO-Preparing a Book Review 08/14 16. Completed Class Locator 08/31 17. Lect. #4: Introduction to Theory 09/02 18. Lect. #5: Bandura 09/02 19. Supplemental Lecture: Termpaper 09/06 20. Lect. #6: Method I 09/07-----*Indicates handouts discussed in class.

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Sample Lecture CritiqueName: R Gyle KingLecture Critique: #2: Historical PerspectivesThe good: (I should say that I had a difficult time thinking of anything good to say.)

Using PowerPoint and handing out candy—but watch your aim; you almost killed the girl I love. The instructor is tall, dark, and reasonably upright for an old person.

The less good: Who cares about the ancient past? We want sex, drugs, & violence, not history.And if you are going to talk about the “father” of adolescent psychology, why not talk about the mother as well—or are you a sexist?Is it necessary to talk about Hall’s sexual practices? Sex is holly, and belongs in the bedroom.Stick with English; your German rendition of “storm and stress” would make Goethe turn in his grave.I really don’t understand what salt story (is that how you pronounced it?) has to do with growth, or have you confused this course with naval sciences.

Use larger print size on your slides. I have 20/10 vision, and your slides are all a big blur to me.

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Supplementary Readings

Hartmann, D. P., & Pelzel, K. (2005). Design, measurement, and analysis in developmental research. In M. H. Bornstein & M. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental sciences: An advanced textbook (5th. ed., pp. 103-184). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Miller, S. A. (1998). Developmental research methods (2nd ed.). Englewoods Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‑Hall.

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Overview: Methods of Study

Goals: To acquaint you with the questions that adolescent investigators are

concerned with answering. To familiarize you with the primary broad approaches to generating

information relevant to these questions. To remind you of the limitations of these methods for answering

these questions & understanding adolescents Coordinates with text, chapter 2, pp. 59-66 & pp. 68-73 The Context: (question): Should we let kids watch violence on TV? Methods of study & their assets and limitations

Case Study “Correlational” Study True Experiments: Laboratory versus naturalistic

Next: Methods II (#7)

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What are the Questions?

Context: Aggression/violence in children/adolescents. Specific issue: Effects of exposure to TV violence .

Broad Questions: Frequency/incidence? (normative question) When does it occur? (developmental question) What is it related to? (nomological question) What causes it? (causal question)

What is the specific causal mechanism? Can it be changed/improved (treatment question)

What is the mechanism of change?

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Context Violence in the media is an important

social problem with extensive history Ancient Greeks

Plato versus Aristotle

• Contemporary Theorists: • Freud, Lorenz: the catharsis hypothesis• Bandura et al.

•Which theory is right? Let the data speak…But which data should be most attended to?

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Theories & Facts

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The Case Study

More-or-less careful descriptions of the natural experiences of a single individual.

E.g., case study described in the newspaper of a child who observed a movie in which the protagonist fed ground glass to the victim by disguising it in candy; the child viewer subsequently attempted to do the same thing to a dislike teacher.

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Evaluating the Case Study Value: Suggests possible relationships (Heuristic value)—addresses the nomological and the causal

question, though not very well

Dangers:Inaccuracy of the description (bias or forgetfulness) on the part of the reporter Lying on the part of the individual (case)The question of causality: What causes what? Concerns about generality: Just who are the results generalizable to?

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Is there anything after the case study?

Assuming we wouldn’t take action on the basis of a case study, how about multiple case studies with a similar outcome?

What other information might we want? (1) What is the rate of viewing violence in TV among non-violent individuals?

(2) What about other violent individuals? How many of them view violence in TV?

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What we would like to know is….

Act

Vio

len

tly

Yes

No A B

C D

View Agg. TV

Yes No

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Correlational Investigations

Better name is ex post facto studies or studies of natural variation

Investigator measures the two or more variables to be correlated (e.g., viewing TV violence & aggression) in a sample of individuals and correlates the two variables (e.g., study by Eron et al.) Nothing is manipulated.

r

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Illustrative (and impressive) ex post facto study by Eron, Huesman et al.

Studied 875 8th graders in rural upstate NY One variable: Parental reports of children's’ TV

viewing habits (a retrospective report) Another variable: Peer nominations used to

measure the children’s aggressiveness Found modest (≈+.37) correlation between

viewing violence on TV & acting aggressively

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And Correlations are Statistics

"The men are excited about shooting a statistician."statatician."

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More on Correlations

Measure of strength of relationship or association between two variables with range from -1.0 to +1.0

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r

r

r

r

r

- +

Perfect

Negative

Moderate

Negative

ZeroModerate

Negative

Moderate

Positive

Perfect

Positive

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Interpretation of Correlation

-1.0 (perfect negative relationship): High score on one variable invariably goes with low score on the other (e.g., distance of nose from ceiling and nose from floor)

Moderate negative correlations: High scores on one variable tend to go with low scores on the other (e.g., golf and bowling scores; hours studying for exam and # wrong on exam)

r

r

r

r

r

r

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Still more on Interpretation

0.0: No relationship (e.g., nose length and IQ; preference for turtle soup & score on first quiz)

r

r

r

r

r

r

r

r

r

rr

r

r

r

Moderate positive correlations: High score on one variable tend to go with high score on the other +1.0 (e.g., height and IQ; high school GPA & college GPA; physical attractiveness & popularity).

+1.0 (perfect positive relationship): High score on one variable invariably go with high score on the other (e.g., height in inches with height in centimeters).

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Evaluating Ex post facto Designs It may be wonderful to discover that two variables are

correlated—addresses the nomological question. But what about the causal question? Correlation is a necessary--but not sufficient--condition for causation. If two variables are causally related, they will be correlated.* However, they may be correlated but not causally related.

Possibilities if X (e.g., viewing violent TV) & Y (acting aggressively) are correlated ( means causes): X Y Y X Z X & Y---------*It has been argued that this many not even be true in all

circumstance!

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True Experiments

Definition: A study in which participants are randomly assigned to conditions (e.g., TV diet). Types: Laboratory versus

naturalistic

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Laboratory Vs. Naturalistic Experiments

Naturalistic Experiment by Boyatzis et al. 5-7 year-old kids randomly assigned to “no TV”

versus “Mightly Morphin Power Rangers”—the Independent Variable (IV)

Participants in both groups observed for incidents of aggression—the Dependent Variable (DV)

Results…

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Boyatzis et al.’s Results

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And Experiments are conducted by…

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Evaluating Experiments

Pluses: Direction of causation clear—so addresses the causal

question.

Minuses: Not all studies allow for random assignment—e.g., who is

early maturer and who is late maturer. Simply because a variable may be causal in some

experiment doesn’t necessarily mean that it is important in real life.

Artificiality—particularly of laboratory experiments—may result in limited generalization…

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Evaluating Laboratory Vs. Naturalistic Experiments

Artificiality of Laboratory versus the control it affords over the phenomena studied

Laboratory studies illustrate Bronfenbrenner’s concerns that child psychology is increasing “..the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults.”

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Summary of: Methods I

First shot at Methods The Case Study Ex post facto design True Experiments

Next: Methods II (#7)

Go in Peace