On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Express understanding of the scientific method, and an appreciation of its role in developing psychological knowledge.
2. Demonstrate knowledge of experimental ethics and experimental research methodology and apply this methodology to experimental data.
3. Contrast basic experimental statistical techniques with emphasis on computerised analysis methods (SPSS).
4. Appraise the relationship between experimental design, collected data and the appropriate statistical technique.

Psychology as science. The role of research in psychology.
Making research and ethical decisions. Reviewing the literature, forming research questions and hypotheses, operationalising constructs, choosing variables.
Experimental and quasi-experimental designs.
Between and within-subjects experimental designs.
Reporting experimental results. The publication manual of the APA.
Statistical concepts: Variance, the normal distribution, levels of measurement, descriptive and inferential statistics.
Descriptive statistics: Frequencies, graphical presentation, measures of central tendency, measures of variability, percentiles, z-scores.
Inferential statistics: Populations and samples, sampling distributions, standard error, confidence intervals, significance, alpha, power.
Parametric versus non-parametric statistics, assumptions.
The t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and their non-parametric equivalents.