Chapter 7: Research Design Explained
Introduction to Correlational Research

You are now at the Chapter 7 section of the book's student Web site.

Here you can

 

 

Review and improve your understanding of the material Quiz yourself Apply this information Get help
See how most of the key terms are connected by looking at this  concept map.

 

To review the key concepts involved in describing and making inferences about a single variable, study this concept map.

Understand Chapter 7's rules and slogans.

Enjoy a fun review of the basics of correlational evidence by reading this murder mystery.

Do this simulation to help you see that what happens in a sample doesn't necessarily happen in the population.

Test  yourself on key terms with flashcards

 

 

 Participate in a descriptive study: Get a better sense of what descriptive research is like by participating in research that uses a descriptive method.

 

Describe how your sample scored on a variable. Describe the relationship between your variables using a correlation coefficient. Tools for making inferences about the correlation in your population 		Help with answering the end-of-chapter exercises.

Play a guessing game that will help you learn how to estimate a correlation coefficient from a graph. Start with Level 1, then move to Level 2.

Visualize what different correlations mean by typing in different correlation coefficients on the line next to "Correlation" (and then pressing "enter') in this interactive demo. You can also drag points on the line to see what effect moving them has on the correlation coefficient.

 Take some practice quizzes

Take  a short, general quiz over the entire chapter.

  • Take six-item quizzes over the first part of the chapter (over orrelation, description, and causality).
  • Take seven-item quizzes over the second part of the chapter (over types of correlational research).
  • Take 12-item quizzes over the third part of the chapter (over describing correlational data using correlation coefficients and scatterplots).
  • Take 14-item quizzes over the fourth part of the chapter (over making statistical inferences from correlational data).
If your data is from a random sample of a population and is based on  counting whether participants did a certain behavior (e.g., helped), you can use this calculator to determine a confidence interval for the percentage of people in your population that do that behavior.

 

Do some archival research on the web using the following links.

 

 

 

Use this tool to interpret positive, negative, and zero correlations.

 

 

Be sure you understand correlation coefficients by downloading "The Correlator"

  • Windows version (When you try to run it, MS defender may give you a warning. If so, click on Defender's  "More Info" link, and then click the "Run anyway" button)
  • Mac version

Further review the material by reading the chapter summary.

A helpful picture that will help you avoid confusing correlation with causation.

Another reminder that correlation is different from causation: It is not certain that a country's chocolate consumption increases its number of Nobel Prize winners or that listening to heavy metal bands increases happiness.

  Before taking a quiz or test over Chapter 7, be sure you can answer these review questions.

Review by

 

 Look at "Cracked" to see two important ways that data can fool us: illusory correlation and mistaking correlation for causation. The article is titled "5 Ways Statistics Are Used to Lie to You Everyday"--Scroll down to get to problems 1 and 2.

Chapter 7 exercises

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