Research Methods

Correlations are the degree to which one variable affects another variable. If you wondered if studying more in psychology classes, you might do a study that tracked the number of hours per week students studied, and their final grade. If more hours of studying generally lead to higher grades, you could infer that there is a positive correlation between studying and higher grades. On the other hand, you might assume that playing video games for more hours than studying might lead to lower grades. If those results were shown by research, then you would see a negative correlation (as one variable goes up, the other goes down).

Correlational Reseach

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