Sample Exam 3b

Which of these statements about approaches to measurement is true?

A strength of open-ended questions is that they provide in-depth, rich information from participants.

While browsing your favorite news website, you come across an opinion poll about the Democratic Presidential Primary candidates. Anyone who comes to the website can participate in the poll, and a total of 17,657 people have responded. What do you conclude about the poll?

Although the sample size is large, it is unknown whether the results of the poll accurately reflect Americans' opinions.

Why is external validity such a high priority for most frequency claims?

Because the goal of most frequency claims is to generalize to a population of interest.

Dr. Purtell wants to sample parents of children who are enrolled in Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for poor and near-poor children. To do this, she randomly selects 25 Head Start programs from around the country, and then surveys all of the parents in each program. This sampling technique is known as...

Cluster sampling

What is the best way for researchers to deal with possible effects of the order in which survey questions are asked?

Create multiple versions of the survey that vary the order in which questions are asked.

For which researcher would a biased sample be a reasonable choice?

Dr. Grammer, who wants to test whether playing video games improves people's spatial abilities.

Which researcher may not need to use a representative sample in order to make a valid claim?

Dr. Iyer, who is investigating whether a new medication increases the survival of cancer patients.

Whose study involves an observational measure?

Dr. Taylor, who counted the number of times parents and children displayed positive interactions during an activity that took place in the lab.

In Chapter 6, we learned that the wording of questions can influence how people respond. For example, experiments show that people are more likely to support _____ than _____, even though these phrases mean the same thing.

Expanding assistance to the poor; expanding welfare.

A recent poll asked participants the following: How much confidence do you have in President Trump's ability to handle domestic and foreign policy? What is wrong with this question?

It is double-barreled.

Kristen creates five items, all of which are designed to measure adolescents' academic engagement at school. Her participants will respond using the following options: 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = Agree 4 = Strongly agree What type of scale has Kristen developed?

Likert

For which of these variables would an observational measure probably have better construct validity than a survey measure? Choose the best response.

Number of steps taken in a 24-hour period.

A researcher is observing the behavior of teenagers in a cafeteria to measure the kinds of topics they discuss. On these occasions, the teenagers behave as they normally would. However, the researchers described their behavior as being overly dramatic and energetic, even though this is not the case. This is an example of...

Observer bias.

In Dr. Reznick's research with infants, he worries that his research assistants' knowledge of the study's hypothesis will influence how they interact with the babies. If they treat babies in each experimental condition differently, this could influence the babies' behavior and, therefore, the study's results. Based on this information, Dr. Reznick is worried about..

Observer effects.

Researchers want to understand the relationship between insulin use and side effects like blurred vision among diabetes patients. Using posters at a local clinic, the researchers recruit Type-I diabetes patients for their sample. This sampling technique is known as... (Choose the BEST response.)

Purposive sampling.

For his undergraduate thesis, Kevin plans to sample undergraduates who are currently enrolled at UF. He wants the composition of his sample to exactly match the ethnic composition of UF, but he doesn't need a representative sample for the kind of claim he wants to make. Which sampling technique should he use? (Choose the BEST response.)

Quota sampling.

James is conducting an experiment to test whether the wording of questions about gun ownership influences how participants respond. Some participants receive Form A of the questions, and other participants receive Form B. The form that participants receive is determined at random. This scenario involves _____ , which is designed to enhance _____.

Random assignment; internal validity.

A researcher wants to measure the job success of all University of Florida students who graduated in 2008, which was right in the middle of the Great Recession. She contacts all of the individuals who now donate to the university. Based on this information, the researcher is...

Recruiting a biased sample.

For which of these claims is an unrepresentative sample acceptable?

The weather at cocoa beach is good for surfing today.

The research assistants in Dr. Diana's lab are making observations of passengers on the bus. Their goal is to measure the number of times passengers sit next to a rider from another racial group. The researchers would choose to use a detailed codebook when...

They want to increase the construct validity of their observations.

Which sampling technique is associated with the greatest external validity?

When conducted properly, all of these techniques are associated with excellent external validity.

Leading questions are problematic because they threaten...

construct validity.

Survey items that rely heavily on the accuracy of participants' memories may...

lack construct validity.

Long questionnaires can be problematic because...

participants are more likely to use response sets on long questionnaires.

Like most psychologists, Dr. Bussing uses convenience samples for her research. Therefore, the external validity of Dr. Bussing's research is _____.

unknown.