How Do Psychologists Use Data To Back Up Their Hypotheses

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Psychologists use data to back up their hypotheses and prove a theory right (or wrong). It is important to present these results in a way that others can understand and scrutinize the findings. The data at this stage is called raw data because nothing has been done with it yet. What happens next is that the results are summarised and the findings are interpreted. There is not only one way to interpret data, there are lots of different statistical techniques that psychologists use to interpret the data. A table is one way organise and make sense of the raw data, a table is clearly headed and labelled – this makes it easy to spot if anything is missing. From a table, you would be able to see how many subjects were in the experimental group compared to the control group and ideally this …show more content…

When looking at data on a graph it becomes easier to see at a glance any trends that are taking place. A graph that psychologists may find very helpful is one showing trends in children’s mental health, if it tends to peak at a certain age or in certain circumstances, then they could use that information to put measures in place to support children in those groups and those particular ages. If the data wasn’t plotted on a graph then the trends could get missed. It is also an easily accessible way for people to access the information. A histogram is a type of bar graph; its distinguishing feature is that it presents the information so that those accessing the information can see immediately the spread or distribution of scores within certain groups. The groups of scores are known as class intervals. A histogram would help people to see when a particular range within the group is scoring higher – for example in school tests. Histograms are a good way of seeing the general spread or distribution of scores as well as

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