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emotional or motivational limitations, as well as memory problems, and thus will result in the elicitation of more complete and accurate details of abuse. There is, however, little scientific information to support claims of their benefits. This article presents the results of two studies that examined young children’s ability to use HFDs to report body touches. (Bruck, 2009, p. 361) 1 In this paragraph, the researcher has identified a research question—about the effect of using human figure drawings on the accuracy of children’s memories of being touched—and begun to make an argument for why it is interesting. In terms of the general model of scientific research in psychology presented in Figure 1.1, these are activities at the “top” of the cycle. In this chapter, we focus on these activities—finding research ideas, turning them into interesting empirical research questions, and reviewing the research literature. We begin, however, with some more basic concepts that are necessary to understand how research questions in psychology are conceptualized. 1. Bruck, M. (2009). Human figure drawings and children’s recall of touching. JournalofExperimentalPsychology: Applied,15, 361–374. Chapter 2 17 2.1 Basic Concepts Available under Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Define the concept of a variable, distinguish quantitative from categorical variables, and give examples of variables that might be of interest to psychologists. 2. Explain the difference between a population and a sample. 3. Describe two basic forms of statistical relationship and give examples of each. 4. Interpret basic statistics and graphs used to describe statistical relationships. 5. Explain why correlation does not imply causation. Before we address where research questions in psychology come from—and what makes them more or less interesting—it is important to understand the kinds of questions that researchers in psychology typically ask. This requires a quick introduction to several basic concepts, many of which we will return to in more detail later in the book. 2.1.1 Variables Available under Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Research questions in psychology are about variables. A variable is a quantity or quality that varies across people or situations. For example, the height of the students in a psychology class is a variable because it varies from student to student. The sex of the students is also a variable as long as there are both male and female students in the class. A quantitative variable is a quantity, such as height, that is typically measured by assigning a number to each individual. Other examples of quantitative variables include people’s level of talkativeness, how depressed they are, and the number of siblings they have. A categorical variable is a quality, such as sex, and is typically measured by assigning a category label to each individual. Other examples include people’s nationality, their occupation, and whether they are receiving psychotherapy. 18 2.1.2 Sampling and Measurement Available under Creative Commons-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Researchers in psychology are usually interested in drawing conclusions about some very large group of people. This is called the population. It could be American teenagers, children with autism, professional athletes, or even just human beings—depending on the interests and goals of the researcher. But they usually study only a small subset or sample of the population. For example, a researcher might measure the talkativeness of a few hundred college students with the intention of drawing conclusions about the talkativeness of men and women in general. It is important, therefore, for researchers to use a representative sample—one that is similar to the population in important respects. One method of obtaining a sample is simple random sampling, in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected for the sample. For example, a pollster could start with
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