Читать книгу Interpreting and Using Statistics in Psychological Research - Andrew N. Christopher - Страница 20

As we have discussed, we as humans tend to have “efficient flaws” in our thinking. They are efficient because they allow us to navigate the world quickly and prevent us from exhausting our cognitive capacities. They are flaws, though, because they allow for mistakes in how we think about the world. When conducting scientific research, we want to do what we can to minimize mistakes. This is where statistics can help. I find it helps students to approach classes in statistics with the mind-set that statistics are tools we need to understand research. Just as we need a screwdriver to tighten a loose screw or scissors to cut paper, we need statistics to understand scientific research. The goal of a research study will guide the type of statistic (or tool) that the researcher needs to use. We now examine four goals of scientific research.

Scientific research in psychology has four overriding goals: (1) to describe, (2) to predict, (3) to explain, and (4) to apply behavioral and cognitive phenomena. The first three goals have different statistical tools associated with them, which we will discuss as we present each goal in turn now.