Glossary | |
These is glossary of research key terms. This glossary is intended as an aid to
professionals and non-professionals who find the world of research
somewhat intimidating. While it is impossible to cover all the terms
that can be confusing, this document briefly defines some of the more
common terms and concepts. | |
| You can always search for entries (regexp permitted). | |
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| Term | Definition |
| Face validity | The extent to which a measuring instrument appears to others to be measuring what it claims to measure. |
| Facts | Things that can be proven. Things held as unshakable truth. Not Values. |
| Falsifiability | In the context of theory construction, is the property of a theory to possibily be shown false. There are several ways to be non-falsifiable. One is to be circular (tautological). For example, to explain why people do dumb things, you could theorize that it is because they are dumb. If you then define dumb as a person who does dumb things, the theory is circular. Another way is to appeal to things that can't be measured. For example, to explain why people go to the movies, we could theorize that they want to. But there is no way to measure whether they want to that would avoid circularity. |
| Falsification | Popper's notion that you can only prove something to be true by failing to falsify it. |
| Felcific calculus | People choose based on optimum utility. |
| Feminism | Seeks to counterbalance the androcentric bias inherent in much 'scientific' research. |
| Field Experiment | A field experiment is a study in which you make changes in the independent variable to see how it affects the dependent variable, but otherwise you leave everything in its natural state. For example, an ethologist (someone who studies animal behavior), might put sugar water at different distances from a bee nest in order to observe how the difference in distance affects the dance that the bees do on returning home to communicate where food is. |
| Glossary V2.0 | |

Glossary