Methods exam 2

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," which two questions should you ask yourself as you read?

"What is the argument?" and "What is the evidence to support the argument?"

A group of students recorded the amount of time they studied for an exam in their research methods course and the grade they received on the exam. The scatter plot shows a positive, linear relationship. What statement best describes this relationship between time spent studying and exam grade?

As study time increased, exam grades increased

after reading the textbook chapter, you say to yourself, "I am sure other people might engage in faulty thinking, but I never would." What are you experiencing?

Bias Blind spot

Which of the following questions assesses internal validity when evaluating causal claims?

Did the researcher randomly assign participants to the different groups

If you are interested in reading an overview of peer-reviewed scientific research within a specific area, which of the following reading sources would you choose?

Edited book

reports the methods and results for research studies that are being reported for the first time

Empirical journal articles

explains the topic of the study. describes the theoretical and empirical background for the research and states the specific research goals for the current study

Introduction

measures the degree and the direction of the linear relationship between two variables

Pearson Correlation Coefficient

one way to represent an association is to plot one variable on the X-axis and the other variable on the Y-axis

Scatter plot

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Dr. Nixon sends his study to a journal to be published. One of the peer reviewers questions the way that Dr. Nixon manipulated emotion, arguing that being exposed to emotional words does not make someone emotional. The reviewer is questioning which of the following?

The construct validity of the study

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Which of the following is the independent variable in Dr. Nixon's study?

The content of the words

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Dr. Nixon's decision to assign participants randomly to Group A and Group B increases which of the following

The internal validity of the study

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. If Dr. Nixon decided against using random assignment, which of the following would be threatened?

The internal validity of the study

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Which of the following makes Dr. Nixon's study an experiment

The study included a manipulated variable and a measured variable

A psychiatrist is testing a medication that treats anxiousness. He has given the medication to all his patients, and all of them have experienced a decrease in their feeling of anxiousness. Although this is interesting, his experience is limited because he does not have

a comparison group that did not receive the medication

you are interested in examining the relationship between a person's attachment style and his/her relationship satisfaction. You find 65 studies that have examined this topic. You combine the results of all these studies and calculate an effect size. Your research is most accurately described as _____.

a meta-analysis

What should the introduction of a research report include

a summary of recent research on the primary topic of interest

Which of the following could be an independent variable in a casual claim

a variable that is manipulated

Which of the following is the first section of an empirical journal article

abstract

briefly describes the study's hypothesis, methods, and major results

abstract

argues that one level of a variable is likely to be associated with a particular level of another variable

association claim

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," why should you read the abstract first?

because it provides an overview of the article

Which of the following allows us to make strong predictions using association claims

both strong positive associations and strong negative associations

Which of the following best describes an abstract?

brief summary of an article

The introduction of the paper starts _____ and then ________

broad, focuses

One variable causes change in another variable

casual claims

an edited book is comprised of chapters on a common topic or theme, and each chapter is written by a different author

chapters in an edited book

An argument someone is trying to make

claim

a given range indicated by a lower and upper value that is designed to capture the population value for some point estimate

confidence interval

a variable we are not interested in, but that changes the outcome of the experiment

confound

abstract, theoretical concepts

construct (conceptual) variable

How well a conceptual variable is operationalized

construct validity

a type of study in which the variables are measured and the relationship between them is investigated

correlational study

the extent to which two variables are observed to go together

covariance

The absence of random assignment in any study

decreases internal validity

You are writing your first empirical journal article. Although you think you know why you found the results you did, you also want to mention some alternative explanations for your findings. In which section will you mention these alternative explanations?

discussion

summarizes the study and discusses the study's significant contributions and perhaps alternative explanations for the results

discussion

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Based on this study, Dr. Nixon can make which of the following claims?

emotion enhances memory

at least one variable is manipulated and at least one variable is measured

experiment

how well the results of a study generalize to, or represent, people or contexts outside of those of the original study

external validity

The discussion is _____ at the beginning and _____ at the end

focused, broad

describes a particular level or degree of a single variable

frequency claim

this is not a common way for psychologists to publish their work, but it is common in other disciplines

full-length books

how did the researchers choose the participants, and how well do those participants represent the intended population

generalizability

the ability to eliminate alternative explanations for the association

internal validity

When researchers conduct an experiment comparing two different treatment conditions, they are likely to be more concerned with _____ validity than _____ validity.

internal, external

The independent vairable

manipulated

the dependent variable

measured

combines results of many studies

meta-analysis

explains in detail how the researchers conducted the study

method

variable A increases but variable B decreases

negative association

to operationalize a variable means to turn a conceptual definition into a measured or manipulated variable

operational variables

a single estimate of some population value based on data from a sample

point estimate

You find that there is a relationship between the amount of sleep one gets and their problem-solving ability. Specifically, having a higher amount of sleep the night before an exam is associated with higher scores on two measures of problem-solving. This is an example of which type of association?

positive association

both variable A and B increase

positive association

Your friend asks you about the best way to study for an exam. You respond that the best way to study is by making flashcards. You can easily think of all the times that you used flashcards and got an A on an exam. However, you fail to take into consideration the times that you got an A on an exam without using flashcards to study, or the times you used flashcards to study but did not do well on an exam. Your faulty thinking is an example of _____.

present/present bias

Which of the following is a limitation of PsycINFO compared to Google Scholar?

psychINFO is not free to use

full bibliographic listing of all the sources the authors cited in the article

references

the measure yields similar scores on repeated measurments

reliability

How does research overcome the problem of confounds

research systematically compares multiple conditions

describes the statistical tests used

results

summarize the published studies that have been conducted in that particular research area

review journal articles

Which of the following is true of variables

some variables can be either manipulated or measured

the extent to which a study's statistical conclusions are precise, reasonable, and replicable

statistical validity

the causal variable (independent) clearly comes first in time, before the effect variable (dependent)

temporal precedence

Which of the following is a casual claim

texting interferes with a driver's ability to pay attention

Dr. Nixon, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of 40 participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Which of the following is the dependent variable in Dr. Nixon's study

the number of words remembered

random assignment

the use of a random method to assign participants into different experimental groups

One of the reasons that research studies are superior to personal experience is

they include at least one comparison group

the appropriateness of a conclusion or a decision

validity

One criterion for determining that Variable X causes Variable Y is that

we can determine that Variable X occurs before Variable Y

edited books consist of a collection of chapters

written by many different experts

There is not association between variables

zero association