Research Design and Hypothesis Testing in Psychology: Understanding the Scientific Process, Apuntes de Administración de Empresas

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MARKETING RESEARCH II

Lecture 2 – Formulating the research question(s) | Developing the hypotheses

Previous lecture

¤ What is an experiment?

¤ Scientific understanding of human behavior ¤ Manipulate IVs, measure DVs ¤ Control extraneous influences ¤ Causal relationship between IV and DV

Sources of research ideas

¤ Everyday life

¤ e.g., Kitty Genovese murder ¤ 38 witnesses saw the attack; no one helped; only one person called the police ¤ idea that bystander intervention drops the more people are around ¤ “bystander effect” or “Genovese syndrome” ¤ e.g., impulse buying

¤ Practical issues

¤ e.g., effect of alcohol on driving

Sources of research ideas

¤ Past research (i.e., already published

findings). You can think of …

¤ replicating the research ¤ generalizing the research ¤ e.g., bystander effect in all cultures? ¤ finding explanations for a phenomenon ¤ e.g., diffusion of responsibility ¤ finding factors under which a phenomenon does not occur ¤ e.g., low number of bystanders

Formulating the research problem ¤ Statement of a research question

¤ Research problem should be very specific

¤ Designing good experiments to test it will be otherwise impossible!

Formulating the research problem ¤ Very important to define what the question is and what it is not. ¤ E.g., ¤ NOT à “The Spanish economic crisis” OR EVEN “The role of the housing market in the Spanish economic crisis”, ¤ BUT à “ How did deregulation in the housing market cause/contribute to the Spanish economic crisis? ”

Formulating the research problem: Building a problem tree There is a problem with litter in the streets of Barcelona People just throw their waste in the streets Spanish people don´t care about their environment There is a lack of dustbins Authorities don´t prioritize the litter problem Change in attitude through time Fastfood and coffee -­‐to-­‐go create more litter There is more litter than there used to be Cleanup services are understaffed Unpleasant environment Fewer tourists Could be injurious to health Lack of income to the municipality Higher medical Littered streets lead to more expenses people littering More difficult to change attitude Causes Consequences Is this a crisis issue? Should waste collection be privatized?

Formulating the research problem ¤ Criteria for good research problems :

¤ Variables should express a relation

¤ Stated in question form

¤ Capable of empirical testing

¤ Question should be formulated in a way that

leaves no doubt about how we’re going to

link the question to the evidence we collect.

Specifying hypotheses

¤ After narrowing down the research problem

and reviewing the literature, you can develop

hypotheses

Specifying Hypotheses

¤ A hypothesis represents a prediction of the

relation that exists among variables

¤ i.e., of the effect of an IV on a DV

¤ Must be capable of being refuted or confirmed

¤ Should be as specific as possible and provide a

clear “tendency” between the variables

¤ BAD : Consumers prefer ads with many arguments ¤ BETTER : Compared to consumers low in need for cognition, consumers high in need for cognition prefer ads with many arguments

Types of Hypotheses

¤ Different types of scientific hypotheses

¤ if…then… structure ¤ If people witness an emergency situation as part of a large group, they will be less likely to help than if they witness the same situation as part of a small group ¤ Non-directional vs. directional ¤ Witnessing an emergency situation as part of a large group affects helping behavior ¤ Witnessing an emergency situation as part of a large group has a negative effect on helping behavior

Hypothesis testing

¤ In an experiment, you test the null

hypothesis

¤ To accept the scientific hypothesis, you

must collect evidence to reject the null

hypothesis

¤ as a researcher, you expect that the null hypothesis will be rejected ¤ If null hypothesis rejected à support for the theory

Hypothesis testing

¤ Example

¤ Simple case: determine if two groups are different from each other ¤ cocaine study ¤ two groups of rats pushing a lever ¤ group 1 receives 0.5 mg/kg ¤ group 2 receives 1.0 mg/kg ¤ which group pushes the lever the most?

Hypothesis testing

¤ Example

¤ Null hypothesis ¤ group 1 = group 2 ¤ Scientific hypothesis ¤ group 1 ≠ group 2