Design of a psychology study?

If you are hoping to assess whether the scores for personality tests and attitude tests co-vary (i.e. increase/decrease together) then you would be conducting a correlation. For this, you would need to give each of your participants a personality test and an attitude test. The results of each test must be numerical (such as a score out of 100). It may be wise to counterbalance the tests (e.g. give half of your participants the personality test first whilst the rest do the attitude test first. This just prevents order effects influencing the results of the second test).

Once you have a numerical score for each participant for each test you can then run a correlation analysis on them. A correlation is a value between -1 and +1 with 0 meaning there is no relationship at all between the variables. The higher the number (e.g. -0.9, or 0.9...) the stronger the correlation. A correlation with a - in front of it is a negative correlation. This means that as the value of one of your variables increases, the other decreases. For example, as the scores for your attitude test increase, the scores for your personality tests decrease. Hence, participants with the highest attitude scores would (likely) have the lowest personality scores. Alternatively, a correlation above 0 is a positive correlation. This means that both variables increase/decrease in the same direction. So as personality score increases, so does attitude score. Thus it is likely that those with the highest attitude scores will also have the highest personality scores.

It's very important to remember that a correlation does not measure cause and effect and it would not be possible to conclude that personality influences attitude or vice versa. This is because there may be a further variable not considered in your study that has influenced the variables independently (such as intelligence). A simple example of why we cannot infer causality from correlation is if we consider chocolate, exercise and weight. I may find that the more chocolate a person consumes the more they tend to weigh (a positive correlation). But what if I also find that the more people weigh, the less exercise they tend to to (a negative correlation)? I cannot possibly conclude what causes what here-does being overweight encourage laziness, or does lack of exercise make you fat...or does eating chocolate make you bigger...or maybe lack of exercise means you have more time to eat!!! I can't tell without conducting an experiment, which is different to a correlation.

Hope this makes sense! Good luck with your study :-)

I'm thinking that the correlation of the study would be how an individual's personality is effected by their attitudes. Or it might be how a person's personality effects their attitudes. Both pretty much mean the same thing really, as a person's personality hinges on their attitude and vice versa.

It might be an overall collaborative study about perhaps generalizing, or maybe stereotyping, or both. For example, someone with a closed mind will be more temperamental to the point of maybe violence if someone attempts to question something they believe in.

Here is just a few thoughts on tribalism. Small social cliques can arguably be categorized as tribal groups. Of course true tribes consist of the full personality types as well as ages. The family unit is another type of tribal grouping and as I'm sure you know is becoming more and more shattered. One interesting observation is adolescent rebellion is far more seen in cultures that have closed family units while adolescent rebellion is near nonexistent in open tribal groups where the adolescent is raised by the whole tribe. One thing to consider is how completely connected a person is to their culture is strongly influenced not only by the size of their group but also by how heterogeneous or homogeneous the group is. My last thought is on tribal ethics. From a Humanistic perspective a person is hardwired with a sense of what is in the best interest of ones tribe/group and a sense of right and wrong is instinctively experienced. In a heterogeneous culture comprised of many cultural subgroups this culture will have many different and often opposing ethical foundations. While we are no longer live in a tribal culture we actually still gravitate toward the elements of small tribal living. I hope my thoughts are of some help.

If you are simply comparing the results of the attitude questionnaire to that of the personality questionnaire, then yes, it is a correlational design.

~Dr. B.~

if you want to see how their personality influences their attitudes then a correlation is useful.

For example you could see how wxtraversion relates to ones attitude toward outgoingness. it just tells you the relation not cause of it.

However, if you want to compare across time, like how personality affect outcomes of one's adherence to taking one's medicine after going to a health seminar, then you need 2 groups of people one 1) going to the seminar 2) not going to the seminar (randomized of course) and administer a personality questionnaire at the beginning. and then at a later time (say in 3 months) you could see the attitude of both groups toward taking medications.

in that case if you found a relationship between say conscientiousness and taking medicine on time, then you have established the cause and effect of it.

Hope this helped.

The experimental design of a Psychological study is how it is conducted and in what order the participants undergo the experimental conditions. Within-subject; whereby all the participants carry out all conditions, between-subject; two or more groups of participants, who differ in some way, carrying out one condition each or mixed; two or more groups of participants carry out two or more conditions each.

A correlation study is a type of study (e.g. field, laboratory etc) and they are used to look for relationships between variables.

It'd be far more interesting to focus on their ACTIONS lol than do throw "questionaires" all around the place about the same thing regarding different people with different lifestyles and different so-called beliefs.

You have to find out what it is you want to test