AP Psych Unit 0 MCQs

A group of ten students took a spelling test on Monday (Test 1), and then the same group of students took the same test again on Friday (Test 2). The scores on the two tests are given in the table. Which of the following is a correlation coefficient that was most likely obtained using the two sets of scores?

.88

Rachel is working with a psychologist on improving her mental well-being so she can play her best on the high school basketball team. Her scores for the season are presented in the table below. Which of the following is the range of Rachel's scores? (4,6,6,9,10,12,15,19)

15

10, 3, 5, 7, 10, 3, 10, 5, 2 The numbers above represent the quiz results for a psychology class. What is the median score for the class?

5

Researchers have found a negative correlation between income and dental problems. What conclusion can correctly be drawn from this statement?

As income increases, the likelihood of dental problems decreases.

A researcher randomly assigned boys and girls to each of two groups. One group watched a violent television program while the other group watched a nonviolent program. The children were then observed during a period of free play, and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded for each group. What is the dependent variable in this study?

Incidence of aggressive behavior

In a normal distribution of scores on assessments like those for intelligence, which of the following statements is true about the area that falls between one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean?

It contains the middle 68% of the distribution

- What is this an example of? (very unsatisfied - very satisfied)

Likert scale

Professor González is interested in evaluating the ability of a new method of note-taking to improve student grades. Group A is trained in the new method and group B uses the traditional outline method of taking notes. What is Professor González' independent variable?

Method of note-taking

Margaret is beginning to plan a research project for her psychology class. She wants to examine whether there is a difference between boys and girls in terms of the frequency with which they throw away their trash in the school cafeteria after they have finished eating lunch. Which of the following methodologies would most accurately measure the behavior of interest in Margaret's study?

Naturalistic observation

Which of the following is most likely to collect in-depth, narrative data through structured interviews?

Qualitative Research Methods

Which if the following is NOT a non-experimental methodology?

Quantitative Research

Which of the following is used to reduce the effects of confounding variables in experiments?

Random assignment

A psychology professor wants to investigate the study habits of students at her university. She cannot collect data from every student but hopes to use a subset of the students to draw accurate conclusions about the behavior of the student body. Which of the following features of research design will best address her goal?

Random sampling

Why is it important to operationalize variables in research?

So that the study is replicable

- Which of the following statements is true based on the histograms above? (A wide, B skinny)

The data results for histogram B are more reliable than the data results in histogram A because the standard deviation is smaller in histogram B.

- Which of the following statements is true of the above graphs?

The mean is identical for both distributions; the standard deviation is larger for distribution A.

Which of the following statements describes the mean, median, and mode of a test whose scores have a positive skew?

The mean will be higher than the median and mode.

The researcher requires each participant to toss twenty coins into a coffee can that is three feet away. Although some of the participants want to quit tossing coins after a few attempts, they are told that once they begin the study they have to complete it. After the coin toss, participants take a test measuring self-esteem. Following the test, all participants are debriefed and told that information about their performance was false. Which of the following violations of ethical guidelines occurs in the study?

Violation of the right to withdraw

A research team wanted to measure how attractive Chris thought Pat was. The researchers measured how long Chris spent looking at Pat as an indicator of how attractive Chris found Pat to be. This measurement constituted

an operational definition

Jonas did a correlation study showing a pattern where loneliness increased with social media use, but he did not know if students were lonely and therefore used social media more or if social media use was increasing their feelings of loneliness. What is this problem referred to as?

directionality problem

Which of the following terms explains why people often recall their predictions before an event happens as much stronger than they actually were?

hindsight bias

In a distribution of a class' test scores, a large number of students received high scores while fewer students received low scores. The distribution of the test scores is best described as being*

negatively skewed

Which of the following p-values would suggest statistical significance and that the results did not occur by chance?*

p = 0.01

These kinds of research studies are considered deserving of publication by other scientists who are experts.

peer review

- A research group conducted a study investigating the connection between self-reported number of hours slept in a given week and scores on a happiness measure. Based on the scatterplot above, the group can report that there is (slash shaped graph)

positive correlation

- Which of the following statistics best approximates the relation between the variables?

r = -.90

Students from a journalism class ask only their friends to participate in a school newspaper survey and neglect to ask the rest of the student body. The journalism students' data may not be generalizable due to

sampling bias

A research psychologist generalizes from a particular sample to an entire population. This is an example of

statistical inference

Researchers find that there is a significant, positive correlation between the number of hours students sleep and their grades. The researchers would be justified in concluding that

students who earn good grades tend to sleep more than those who do not

Professor Ahad has forty-three students in section one of the psychology classes she teaches and fifty-two students in section two. Section one meets at eight a.m. and, section two meets at one p.m. Professor Ahad gives all of her students the same final exam, and those in section two score significantly higher than those in section one. Professor Ahad concludes that her section one students are academically inferior to students in section two. The biggest problem with Professor Ahad's conclusion is that

time of day is a confounding variable in this scenario.

Synesthesia is a phenomenon that has been estimated to occur in only a few people in a million. Because of its rarity, researchers are likely to choose which research method to study it?

Case study

Researchers examined injury reports for 480 professional football games and determined there was an association between outdoor temperature and number of concussions reported. Which of the following best describes the type of research method used in this study?

Correlational

Which of the following is NOT an APA ethical guideline for human subjects testing?

Deception is not allowed