AP Psychology Research Methods flashcards
This deck covers the research methods vocabulary AP Psychology tests every year: independent, dependent, and confounding variables; operational definitions and hypotheses; random sampling versus random assignment; experimental and control groups; placebo and double-blind procedures; the non-experimental methods (case study, naturalistic observation, survey, correlation); reliability and validity; the ethical requirements of informed consent, debriefing, and IRB review; and the descriptive statistics, from central tendency and standard deviation to the normal curve, skew, and statistical significance.
Research methods questions are spread across the whole multiple-choice section, and at least one free-response question typically hands you a described study and asks you to identify variables, criticize the design, or apply a statistical concept to it. The distinctions are precise and easy to blur under time pressure — random sampling and random assignment do completely different jobs, and a correlation of −0.85 is stronger than one of +0.40 — so these are terms worth getting exactly right rather than roughly right.
The deck
How to study this deck
- Practice with study descriptions, not definitions: read a two-sentence scenario, then name the independent variable, the dependent variable, the operational definition, and one possible confound before flipping the card. That is the exact task the free-response question sets.
- Drill the pairs that get swapped — random sampling versus random assignment, reliability versus validity, correlation versus causation, positive versus negative skew — as contrast cards where you must say what each one does that the other does not.
- For every statistic, know what it would look like on a graph. Say aloud where the mean sits relative to the median in a positively skewed distribution, and sketch the 68-95-99.7 percentages onto a normal curve until they come without thinking.