Psychology Revision Sac 2a Mental health and stress test

What is mental health and mental illness?

Mental health is the capacity to interact

Different approaches to classifying mental illness

The axis on the DSM IV

Stress and stressors

Fight/flight response

Psychological stressors

Design Independent Groups

Description Participants allocated to one of two groups only: either the control or the Experimental groups.

Advantages - Inexpensive and easy to run - Can sample large numbers of people - No pretesting needed - No other effects

Repeated Measures

Participants involved in both the control and experimental groups, i.e. experience both conditions

Extraneous variables related to participant characteristics are eliminated as the same group of participants is used Smallers samples can be

Disadvantages - May not be a representation of the population as participant differences have not been controlled, e.g. one group may be more intelligent than the other. - Order effects can impact results

Matched participants

After pre-testing, those with similar characteristics are paired together and one is assigned to the Control group while the other is allocated to the experimental group. E.g. Matched on intelligence

used - Many extraneous variables due to participant characteristics are eliminated, as both groups are paired on certain characteristics

- Time consuming and costly to set up and run, as a pre-test must be conducted to match participants before the experiment can begin - if one pair drops out, the other participant from that matching pair must also be removed.

Order effects in repeated measures designs: a) Or b) fatigue or boredom from having to repeat the task. Both of those types of effects will influence the results in an unwanted way. One way to fix/prevent these effects is to use counterbalancing which ensure that these types of E.Vs are balanced across the two groups of participants. Participants may experience order effects when the participate in the second of the two conditions (control or experimental.). This can result in either: practise effects, i.e. they may get better at a task the second time they perform it.

Counterbalancing: Condition Control Experimental Trial 1 Group A Group B Trial 2 Group B Group A

Matches Participants Example: Scores on an I.Q pre-test:

I.Q Score 125 120 115 110

Control Group Jane Harry Time Karen

Experimental Aaron Monique Linda Peter

Descriptive statistics:

These types of statistics describe/summarise the results/ data of an experiment only. Eg. Mean, Median, Mode, Range, Graphs, etc. However, we cannot make conclusions, let alone generalisations based on descriptive statistics. We need inferential statistics to help us do this.

Inferential Statistics:
How do we know if the difference in results between the control and Experimental groups is statistically significant? Answer: We use p-values to work this out.

P- Value = Probability Value: P< 0.05 ; p 0.05 0.05 = 5% chance only that the results are due to chance factors (i.e Confounding Variables) If p < 0.05, we want to be 95% certain that it is the I.V causing the D.V by itself (no other factors)

T- tests are used to calculate p-values P- value = p<0.05 P<0.01 if yes: - we can make conclusions hypothesis is supported generalize to population

If no: - Cannot make a conclusion Therefore hypothesis is rejected Cannot generalize to population.

For p<0.05: if we ran/replication an experiment 100 times, then it would be statistically significant if 95 times (or more) the IV caused the DV, While on 5 (or fewer) occasions, the DV was caused by chance factors.