Posted in Uncategorized on February 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized on February 19, 2012| 15 Comments »
When I first looked at this topic my mind shouted ‘NO, IT DOESN’T!!!’ purely due to the amount of times it was drummed into our head in research lectures that correlation does not necessary indicate causation (http://www.jerrydallal.com/LHSP/cause.htm). Then I looked again and realised that, in some cases, correlation does in fact show causation.
It is well known to all students who study statistics that correlation is commonly misunderstood as causation. This mainly due to mediums such as the media, who are always claiming that studies have shown one completely random thing to be linked to another completely random thing .(http://www.criticalthinking.org.uk/smokingparents/) And many times, it is true that a correlation does not mean that A causes B, however,once in a while we do find a correlation that is due to causation. For example; many cases of depression are believed to be caused by a lack of serotonin, a negative correlation between serotonin levels and feelings of depression that shows causation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080204094507.htm
So despite being taught that we should always be sceptical when looking at correlations, we must not forget to look into the variables of that correlation and how, or if, they have more of a relationship than a mutual steady increase or decrease on their respective scales, e.g height in cm and weight in lbs. We should be open to both possibilities that a correlation may or may not show causation.
Posted in Uncategorized on February 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized on February 5, 2012| 1 Comment »
I found this topic quite a challenging one, as I really couldn’t decide which view to take. In the end I decided on a half way point, that psychological terminology should somewhat be written in layman terms, in that unfamiliar theories or methods etc should be clearly explained when they are first mentioned, but terms such as reliability or semi-structured interview should be well known enough or self-explanatory enough to not need a description.
On the one hand it would be great if all psychological papers were written in layman terms as it would encourage more people to learn about psychology. Everyone deserve the chance to learn about science, but many may be put off by the complexity of research reports and the unfamiliar terminology. Some of the terminology in psychology can be pretty intimidating and many papers do not explain any terminology, making it impossible to understand for those who are new to the subject. In fact, this is my sixth year of studying psychology and I still find myself flicking through my Oxford psychology dictionary a million times whenever I read a research paper.
On the other hand, if researchers were to explain every single piece of terminology in every paper, including well known statistical terms such as validity, the report would go on forever and readers would get bored very quickly. Also, some psychological terms can be self-explanatory or are known generally beyond the psychological field, meaning that explaining and dumbing down all psychological reports is pointless and makes writing the reports all the more difficult and long-winded.
Our current POPPS project is to talk about a previous blog that we have written using absolutely no psychological jargon what so ever. I’ve been working on my presentation this weekend and I found it to be far more difficult than I first thought. As I already know a lot of psychology terminology, especially the jargon used in a blog that I have written, it would be easy for me to put certain terms in and know exactly what I was talking about, and most of the people in my audience would know exactly what I was talking about too. What I discovered most when writing this presentation was that no matter how hard you try, you can not put everything into layman terms, the best you can do is explain the terminology and hope that those who are unfamiliar with it are able to understand.
In conclusion, I think that psychology should be written in layman terms when necessary so that anyone who reads it will be able to understand to a degree what the paper is about. However, not everything should be written for the layman, and not everything can be. Simpler terms should be left as they are as the reader can usually work out the meaning for themselves, but more complex, unknown terminology could certainly be written for the layman without much hassle.
klbpsych 