WEBVTT

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The question, 'How do we know', is one of the most important questions we can ask.

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Psychologists learn by performing reasearch of different types to learn about our mental processes and behavior

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In this activity, you will explore some different types of research methods and what can be learned from them.
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There are different ways to learn.

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Scholars in some fields try to learn by reasoning about what ought to be true.

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In sciences, including psychology, we learn by directly observing what we want to study.

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This is called the 'empirical' approach.  In psychology's case, we want to learn about behavior.

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In science we share what we have observed.

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To make this sharing work, we must record our observations objectively through careful measurement.

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Measurement is the process of turning our observations into clear records that others can examine for themselves.

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Usually we turn our observations into numbers.