1. Non-Experimental designs: Developmental designs & Small-N designs
Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology

2. Announcements No labs this week; work on group project data
Journal Summary 2 due in lecture Wed
Please write your GA’s name on the checklist
No names, SSN only

3. Developmental designs
Non-experimental or quasi-experimental
Used to study changes in behavior that occur as a function of age changes

4. Developmental designs
Age serves as a quasi-independent variable
Three major types
Cross-sectional
Longitudinal
Cohort-sequential

5. Developmental designs
Cross-sectional design
Study groups of individuals of different ages at the same time
Group means are then compared

6. Developmental designs
Cross-sectional design
Groups are pre-defined on the basis of a pre-existing variable
Use age to assign participants to group
Age is subject variable treated as a between-subjects variable

7. Developmental designs
Cross-sectional design
Advantages:
Can gather data about different groups (i.e., ages) at the same time
Participants are not required to commit for an extended period of time

8. Developmental designs
Cross-sectional design
Disadvantages:
Individuals are not followed over time
Cohort (or generation) effect: individuals of different ages may be inherently different due to factors in the environment
Example: are 5 year old different from 13 year olds just because of age, or can factors present in their environment contribute to the differences?
Cannot infer causality due to lack of control

9. Developmental designs
Longitudinal design
Follow the same individual or group over time
Repeated measurements over extended period of time
Age is treated as a within-subjects variable
Changes in dependent variable reflect changes due to aging process

10. Developmental designs
Longitudinal design
Rather than comparing groups, the same individuals are compared to themselves at different times
Changes in performance are compared on an individual basis and overall

11. Developmental designs
Longitudinal design
Advantages:
Can see developmental changes clearly
Avoid some cohort effects (participants are all from same generation, so changes are more likely to be due to aging)
Can measure differences within individuals

12. Developmental designs
Longitudinal design
Disadvantages
Can be very time-consuming
Can have cross-generational effects:
Conclusions based on members of one generation may not apply to other generations
Example: are individuals who grew up during WWII the same or different from individuals who grew up after?

13. Developmental designs
Longitudinal design
Disadvantages
Numerous threats to internal validity:
Attrition/mortality
History
Practice effects
Improved performance over multiple tests may be due to practice taking the test
Absence of control
Cannot determine causality

14. Developmental designs
Cohort-sequential design
Combines elements of cross-sectional and longitudinal designs
Addresses some of the concerns raised by other designs
For example, allows to evaluate the contribution of generation effects

15. Developmental designs
Cohort-sequential design
Measure groups of participants as they age
Example: measure a group of 5 year olds, then the same group 5 years later, as well as another group of 5 year olds
Age is both between and within subjects variable

16. Developmental designs
Cohort-sequential design
Advantages:
Can measure generation effect
Less time-consuming than longitudinal
Disadvantages:
Still time-consuming
Still cannot make causal claims

17. Small N designs What are they?
Historically, these were the typical kind of design used until 1920’s when there was a shift to using larger sample sizes
Even today, in some sub-areas, using small N designs is common place
(e.g., psychophysics, clinical settings, expertise, etc.)

18. Small N designs One or a few participants
Data are not analyzed statistically; rather rely on visual interpretation of the data
Observations begin in the absence of treatment (BASELINE)
Then treatment is implemented and changes in frequency, magnitude, or intensity of behavior are recorded

19. Small N designs Baseline experiments – the basic idea is to show:
when the IV occurs, you get the effect
when the IV doesn’t occur, you don’t get the effect (reversibility)
Before introducing treatment (IV), baseline needs to be stable
Measure level and trend

20. Small N designs Level – how frequent (how intense) is behavior?
Are all the data points high or low?
Trend – does behavior seem to increase (or decrease)
Are data points “flat” or on a slope?

21. ABA design ABA design (baseline, treatment, baseline)
The reversibility is necessary, otherwise
something else may have caused the effect
other than the IV (e.g., history, maturation, etc.)

22. Small N designs Advantages
Focus on individual performance, not fooled by group averaging effects
Focus is on big effects (small effects typically can’t be seen without using large groups)
Avoid some ethical problems – e.g., with non-treatments
Allows to look at unusual (and rare) types of subjects (e.g., case studies of amnesics, experts vs. novices)
Often used to supplement large N studies, with more observations on fewer subjects

23. Small N designs Disadvantages
Effects may be small relative to variability of situation so NEED more observation
Some effects are by definition between subjects
Treatment leads to a lasting change, so you don’t get reversals
Difficult to determine how generalizable the effects are

24. Small N designs
Some researchers have argued that Small N designs are the best way to go.
The goal of psychology is to describe behavior of an individual
Looking at data collapsed over groups “looks” in the wrong place
Need to look at the data at the level of the individual

25. Next time Statistics (Chapter 14) Journal summary due Wed in lecture
Put your SSN on checklist & the name of your GA
No labs this week