Exam 1 for research methods

Salma conducts a study and finds that her data does not completely support her theory. What should she avoid saying?

"My data disproves my theory."

Benjamin is a social psychologist who studies marriage. He believes that marital satisfaction has two components: the ability to trust one's partner and a belief that one can be a good spouse. He conducts a study to test his ideas. Assuming that his data match his theory, what statement should he make?

"The data provides support for my theory."

What is Dr. Ewell likely to give his research assistants to prevent observer bias?

A codebook.

In this study, ,the authors recorded how many math questions participants tried to solve. What is this an example of?

A measured variable

Imagine that Dr. Kline is a clinical psychologist who volunteers his time at a local prison counseling several inmates. Because of his connection there, he is considering using prisoners as his participants. The institutional review board (IRB) would insist that Dr. Kline have a _______ for the prisoners when they give informed consent?

A prisoner advocate.

Benjamin is a social psychologist who studies marriage. He believes that marital satisfaction has two components: the ability to trust one's partner and a belief that one can be a good spouse. What is this known as?

A theory.

What is the correct order of sections of an empirical journal article?

Abstract, Method, Results, Discussion, references.

Authority

Accepting information communicated by credible figures (news media, politicians, religious figures, instructors) without questioning it.

Imagine that Dr. Kline is a clinical psychologist who volunteers his time at a local prison counseling several inmates. Because of his connections there, he is considering using prisoners as his participants. Why is this choice potentially problematic?

According to the Belmont Report, prisoners are entitled to special protection.

What is an example of applied research?

An educational psychologist who looks for a way to increase math skills in 8-year-olds.

What is an example of basic research?

An experimental psychologist who examines people's ability to perceive a "sweet" taste.

#2: What does the existing research tells us about the problem?

Answer is found at bulk of the introduction.

#1: What is the problem, why is it a problem, and how are the researchers planning to approach it?

Answers are generally found in the opening paragraph(s) of paper.

#3: What is the hypothesis and how do the reserchers test it?

Answers found at the end of introduction and in the methods / material sections.

Scientific Claims

Are the conclusions that people make about data.

Statistical Validity

Are the statistical conclusions accurate?

Your friend Gaby loves reading articles about psychology studies in her monthly women's magazine. What would you tell her?

Be careful about reading those articles because they may not present accurate findings.

When reading an empirical journal article, why should you read the abstract first?

Because it provides an overview of the article.

Causal Claims

Casual; they indicate that one variable causes another variable.

A psychiatrist is testing a drug that treats depression. He has given the drug to all his patients and all of them have experienced a decrease in depressive symptoms. Although this is interesting, why is his experience limited?

Comparison group that did not receive the drug.

What is the difference between data that is collected anonymously and data that is collected confidentially?

Confidential research collects participants' names but separates them from the data; anonymous research does not collect participants' names.

What is it called when we ask questions to get the answers we want?

Confirmatory hypothesis testing.

What is another word for outcome?

Confound.

Dr. Sheffield has now decided that he wants to test his measure on some university students. He has a group of 100 university students complete his measure. He also has them complete two other measures. He finds that his new measure is positively associated with each of these other measures. This procedure has provided evidence for the _________ of Dr. Sheffield's measure.

Convergent Validity

Association Claims

Correlation; describe a relationship between two or more variables.

To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of his clients and at the same time measures how many times they have been gambling in the past month. He predicts that clients who score higher on his measure will also report gambling more time in the past month. The procedure is meant to provide evidence for what?

Criterion Validity

Upon receiving IRB approval, Dr. Kline trusts his graduate student to conduct the study. However, his graduate student does not conduct the study and instead provides Dr. Kline with invented results that support his hypotheses. What is this known as?

Data fabrication

Dr. Kline plans to tell his participants that the reason he is waking them up during the night is to recalibrate the EEG machine. This would be an example of what?

Deception.

Frequency Claims

Descriptive; describe a rate or frequency of a single variable.

Intuition

Drawing conclusions based on subjective feelings. (thinking the easy way). Is vulnerable to many biases which lead to erroneous conclusions.

What is the approach of collecting data and using it to develop, support, and/or challenge a theory?

Empiricism.

Basic Research

Goal of the research is NOT directed at a specific real world knowledge on a particular subject.

What is true regarding obtaining informed consent in Dr. Kline's study?

He does need to obtain informed consent.

Dr. Sheffield has decided to test the discriminant validity of his new measure. He has a group of first-time Gamblers Anonymous attendants complete his measure and finds that they score higher than a group of people who do not attend the group. What is the result that would provide evidence for discriminant validity?

He finds the measure of gambling is not correlated with a measure of life satisfaction in the same two groups of people.

Elliot is double majoring in English and psychology. He plans on being a high school English teacher and is only majoring in psychology because he finds the classes interesting. What is not an important reason for him to be a good consumer of research?

He will likely need to be a producer of researcher as well.

Imagine that Dr. Ewell wants to videotape the children in the park. What is true?

He will likely need to get permission to videotape the children prior to doing so.

Given the scenario above, Dr. Ewell is concerned that the children will behave differently because of the presence of research assistants. What could he do to address this concern?

Hide a video camera in the daycare center and record the children playing without them.

External Validity

How broadly do the results generalize?

Construct Validity

How well do the variables measures / manipulate the broad constructs of interest?

What does it mean that behavioral research is probabilistic?

Inferences drawn from behavioral research are not expected to explain all cases.

Given the scenario above, Dr. Ewell decides to collect his data at a neighborhood park. He has his two research assistants pose as a married couple having a picnic. While having their picnic, they take detailed records of the sharing behavior of the children and note whether the pairs are same sex or opposite sex. Given his use of two research assistance, he must establish_________ of their measures.

Interrater Reliability.

Research Production

Learning research methods lays the foundation for all that is required inscience careers.

Research Consumption

Learning research methods lays the foundation for understanding scientific reports and navigating through the information.

Research Production

Learning research methods lays the foundations for all that is required in science careers.

Experiments

Manipulate the predicted cause and measure the predicted effect.

Independent Variable

Measured variable in an experiment (cause).

Dependent variable

Measured variable in an experiment (effect).

Matthew is reading an empirical journal article and wants to know whether the authors used the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) or the NEO-PI to measure extraversion. What section would he find this information?

Methods

Availability Heuristic

Our interference are often guided by what most ____ comes to mind.

Dr. Kline plans to use deception in his study and is thinking about a debriefing session. What is true of the debriefing?

Participants must be told the nature of the deception and the reasons for it.

Dr. Ellison finds a relation between the amount of sleep and problem solving. Specifically, having a higher amount of sleep the night before an exam is associated with higher scores on two measures of problem solving. What type of associated is this an example of?

Positive association.

Applied Research

Practical; the goal of the research is to solve a problem in the real world.

Another word for hypothesis

Prediction.

Curiosity

Questioning things that are not fully understood.

Given the scenario above, Dr. Ewell is concerned that the children will behave differently because of the presence of research assistance. What is he concerned about?

Reactivity

Unacknowledged observation is done to counteract with what?

Reactivity.

Skepticism

Refusing to accept everything at face value.

Empiricism

Relying on observation to draw conclusions about the world. An original article.

In considering whether research is ethical, what is balanced against each other?

Risk to participants versus financial cost to conduct the study.

Statistical Determination

Science can identify factors that cause/predict psychological events at probabilities greater than chance.

What is the distinction between scientific journals and popular magazines?

Scientific journal articles are peer-reviewed; popular magazines are not published on specific topics like psychology.

systematic Observation

Scientists make observations in tightly controlled studies that remove bias.

Systematic Observation

Scientists make observations in tightly controlled studies that removes bias.

Science

Set of methods used to collect information about things in the world and build a reliable base of knowledge about them.

Data

Set of observations that are used to evaluate the accuracy of a theory; do the observations support the hypothesis.

Variable

Something that varies / changes of has more than one level / value; variables are the core components of scientific research / data.

Hypothesis

Specific predictions drawn from a theory that answer questions about the nature of world; if/then propositions.

Theory

Statement or set of statements that describe general principles about how variables relate to one another.

Dr. Kline suspects that the people who will most benefit from his study are high school and college students, who are asked to preform cognitive functions in various states of sleep deprivation. Given this information, what type of participants should Dr. Kline recruit for his study?

Students from a community college.

Covariance

Study must show the two variables are related to one another.

Conformation Bias

Tendency to only seek out information that confirms intuitions. Knowledge acquired through research is generally more accurate than knowledge acquired through intuition.

Temporal Precendence

The "casual" variable must occur before the outcome variable.

What aspect of the peer-review cycle allows for the greatest amount of honesty in reviews?

The anonymity of the peer reviewers.

Dr. Kang sends his study to a journal to be published. One of the peer reviewers question the way Dr. Kang manipulated emotion, arguing that being exposed to emotional words does not make one emotional. What is the reviewer questioning?

The construct validity of the study.

Dr. Kang's decision to assign participants randomly to Group A and Group B increases what?

The internal validity of the study.

If Dr Kang decided against using random assignment, what would be threatened?

The internal validity of the study.

Hannah just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project What information might she get out of reading the references section of her article?

The name of an article that researched a similar topic.

In this study, the authors were interested in students' math effort. What would be a reasonable operational definition of math effect?

The number of math classes taken in college A score on a standardized measure of math effect The number of math problems students answered correctly.

What is a constant in this study?

The sex of the participants.

What is a variable in this study?

The sex of the role model.

Susan's hypothesis was not completely supported by her data. What does this mean?

The theory may need to be amended.

Dr. Kang can make a casual claim that "emotion enhances memory" for what reasons?

There is a numeric difference between Groups A and B. Reading the words occurred before recalling the words. Dr. Kang treated Groups A and B identically except for the emotional word content.

What are reasons to be skeptical of an authority?

They cherry-picked the evidence they presented. They based their opinions on their own experience. They based their opinions on their intuition.

How many variables are mentioned in this study/headline?

Two

Illusionary Correlations

Two events that occur together and stand out are seen as being casually related.

Dr. Sheffield decides to test the criterion validity of his measure. Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people that includes suspected problem gamblers. What does he also need to do to get evidence for criterion validity?

Two months later, ask the same group of people to report how many times they have gambled recently.

Given the scenario above, Dr. Ewell decides to collect his data at a neighborhood park. He has his two research assistants pose as a married couple having a picnic. While having their picnic, they take detailed records of the sharing behavior of the children and not whether the pairs are same sex or opposte sex. What is this technique?

Unacknowledged observation

If Dr. Sheffield's measure does not actually measure pathological gambling, his measure is said to lack what?

Validity

Vanessa claims hat she sleeps better when she falls asleep to music. She has a comparison group, because she has noticed that she does not listen to music every night, only when she remembers to plug in her iPod. She typically remembers to plug in her iPod on nights when she is able to finish studying earlier. What problem do you see in Vanessa's reasoning about sleeping better to music?

Vanessa may be sleeping better because she is less distracted by studying/going to bed sooner.

What is the problem with the availability heuristic?

We do not examine all of the evidence, only what we can quickly think of.

To address the Belmont principle of beneficence, Dr. Kline would need to ask what?

What can I do to decrease the potential harm experienced by my participants?

When reading an empirical journal article, what questions should you ask yourself as you read?

What is the argument? and What is the evidence to support the argument? What were the methods and What are the results? What is the hypothesis? and What are the explanations. (all of the above.)

Dr. Kline is deciding whether he needs to give participants a reason for waking them up several times during the night. He knows that he cannot tell them the real reason, but he is unsure whether he should deceive them or provide them with no cover story at all. What issues should be considered most heavily when deciding whether or not to use deception?

Whether he can conduct the study just as well without deception.

what is an example of being a producer of research?

administering an anxiety questionnaire.

Scientific use of theory

organize/explain specific facts, open to modification, generate new knowledge, grounded in data.

Interrogating Information

primary goal of course is to offer skills needed to evaluate the legitimacy of information that you encounter in everyday life.

Probabilistic

research results are suppose to explain a phenomenon a large proportion of the time (but not every single instance).

Unscientific use of theory

synonym for opinion and the "it's just a theory" statement.

Dr. Kline asks his participants to provide informed consent. Doing this adhering to which principle of the belmont report?

the principle of respect for persons.