PSY 212 EXAM 1
Another word for data is a(n)
observation
Which of the following is an association claim?
"Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction."
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, which of the following statements should he make?
"The data provide support for my theory."
Marcella is conducting a PsycINFO search for treatments for autism spectrum disorder by searching "autism treatment." However, her search is returning too many results. If she is interested in getting more specific results, Marcella could search
"autism treatment" and "behavioral" and enter an age range of interest.
Which of the following is NOT possible?
A measure is neither reliable nor valid
What is the difference between a ratio scale of measurement and an interval scale of measurement?
A ratio scale of measurement has a zero value that actually means "nothing" or "the absence of something," but an interval scale does not.
Which of the following is necessary for a sample to be considered representative?
All members of the population have an equal chance of being included in the sample.
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.
In which of the following ways are content and face validity similar?
Both involve subjective judgments.
What does it mean that behavioral research is probabilistic?
Conclusions drawn from behavioral research are probably true.
Which of the following is the reason that scientific journals use peer review?
It ensures that the studies published are of the highest quality.
Which of the following is true of probability sampling?
It is the best way to obtain a representative sample.
Which of the following is true of sample size?
It primarily affects statistical validity.
Shoppers often leave reviews for products that they purchased online. Which of the following best describes the external validity of product reviews on an online shopping site?
The external validity is low because this is a self-selected sample of online shoppers.
Sasha believes that she is a nice person. To confirm this, she asks all her friends whether she is a nice person; they all agree that she is. Sasha concludes that she is a nice person and says she has evidence of it. However, she does not ask any of her enemies whether they think she is a nice person. This is an example of which of the following?
a confirmation bias
Online surveys commonly suffer from which of the following?
self-selection
Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumption and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a categorical way to operationalize caffeine consumption?
whether the participant drank coffee in the 24 hours prior to the study
Convenience sampling relies on which of the following?
studying people who are easy to find
Which of the following statements is true of random assignment and random sampling?
Random assignment is necessary for internal validity, whereas random sampling is necessary for external validity.
Danesh has just read an article that describes a study that used a survey completed by participants to assess anxiety levels in adults. He is interested in the reliability of the survey and finds that the authors have provided information about both internal and test-retest reliability. However, there is no information about interrater reliability. Which of the following reasons explains why the authors do not report interrater reliability?
The anxiety scale is a self-report measure, and interrater reliability is needed only when two or more observers are providing ratings.
Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that three fundamental needs are required for human growth and fulfillment: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Susan predicts that students who have these needs met in their psychology class feel happier and more satisfied with the class. She collects data and finds that students who feel more related and competent do feel happier, but that feeling more autonomous does not seem to matter. Susan thinks that maybe autonomy is necessary only when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated. Susan's hypothesis was not completely supported by her data. What does this mean?
The theory may need to be amended
Naomi is studying the effect of popularity on academic success for her research methods project. To do this, she has elementary school students rate how popular each member of their class is. She then uses this information to rank the students on popularity (e.g., John is the most popular, Vanessa is the second-most popular). Which of the following best describes this variable?
an ordinal scale of measurement
Research that is done specifically to solve a practical problem, like increasing memory ability or decreasing symptoms of depression, is known as
applied research.
Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Men Should Avoid Rock Music When Playing Board Games." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Fancourt, Burton, & Williamon, 2016.) In the study, men and women played the game "Operation" when listening to different types of music. Male participants performed worse when listening to AC/DC than when listening to Mozart, but female participants' performance did not differ based on music.
a constant
Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that three fundamental needs are required for human growth and fulfillment: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Susan predicts that students who have these needs met in their psychology class feel happier and more satisfied with the class. She collects data and finds that students who feel more related and competent do feel happier, but that feeling more autonomous does not seem to matter. Susan thinks that maybe autonomy is necessary only when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated. Susan's prediction that students who have all three needs met will experience greater satisfaction with their psychology class is an example of which of the following?
a hypothesis
What should the introduction of a research report include?
a summary of recent research on the primary topic of interest
A helpful tool for visualizing test-retest reliability and interrater reliability is a
bar graph
Research that is done specifically to add to our general understanding of psychology, like distinguishing the components of extraversion or predicting the time it takes a person to determine whether an object is a face or another object, is known as
basic research.
Research articles that use terms such as unbiased sample, random samples, or representative sample allow for readers to
be confident in a study's external validity.
When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," why should you read the abstract first?
because it provides an overview of the article
: Dr. Ramon makes the following claim: "Watching television leads people to spend less time communicating with their spouses, study says." Dr. LaSalle makes the claim: "Research shows that making more money correlates with spending less time talking with your spouse." Which type of claim is Dr. Ramon making?
casual claim
Dr. Ramon makes the following claim: "Watching television leads people to spend less time communicating with their spouses, study says." Dr. LaSalle makes the claim: "Research shows that making more money correlates with spending less time talking with your spouse." Which type of claim is Dr. LaSalle making?
causal claim
If a measurement looks like it is a plausible operationalization of a conceptual variable, then it has
face validity.
What is the term for a researcher's definition of the variable in question at a theoretical level?
conceptual definition
Which of the following is an example of a nonprobability sample?
convenience sample
What is the most common sampling technique in behavioral research?
convenience sampling
: Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. Dr. Sheffield has now decided that he wants to test his measure on some university students (who some estimates say have a 6% prevalence rate of compulsive gambling). He has a group of 100 university students complete his measure. He also has them complete two other measures (one that measures addictive behavior in general and one that measures general attitudes toward gambling). 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
Your friend Dominic is complaining about having to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a test that is required to go to graduate school and is similar to the ACT and SAT. He complains, "Tests like the GRE don't really measure how well people actually do in graduate school." Dominic is questioning the ________ of the test.
criterion validity
: Dr. White reads about a new theory that states that depression is caused by increased levels of estrogen in the womb. To test this theory, she conducted a study comparing the level of estrogen in amniotic fluid in individuals who were later diagnosed with depression with the level of those who did not develop depression. Dr. White found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in the amniotic fluid. In this study, estrogen levels in participants were the
data
When your scale does not correlate with other, unrelated procedures or scales, it has ________ validity.
discriminant
Lana is writing her first empirical journal article. Although she thinks she knows why she found the results she did, she also wants to mention some alternative explanations for her findings. In which section will she mention these alternative explanations?
discussion
Another word for discriminant validity is ________ validity.
divergent
Dr. Leising conducts observational studies of adolescents interacting with peers during problem-solving tasks. She records each 30-minute interaction and then has the students in her laboratory code prosocial behaviors in the adolescents as they view each video. Because she has several students coding the videos, she calculates how reliable their scores are with each other by having them all code the same videos periodically. Which type of reliability is Dr. Leising calculating?
interrater reliability
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. In which section would he find this information?
method
Which of the following is an example of physiological measurement?
number of panic attacks a patient reports
For his research methods class, Felipe plans to watch how students treat other children in their classrooms who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He will evaluate how positively or negatively the children are treated by their classmates. This is an example of what type of measurement?
observational measurement
Which of the following could be an independent variable in a causal claim?
one that is manipulated
Which of the following is a dependent variable?
one that is manipulated
Dr. Ellison finds a relation between 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. This is an example of which type of association?
positive association
If you wanted to know exactly which statistical analyses were used in a particular study, you should consult the
results section of a journal article.
Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester— Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. Dr. Kramer needs to avoid which of the following if he hopes to have an unbiased sample?
sampling only those students who come to class frequently
For her research methods class, Serena plans to interview several teachers about their attitude toward teaching children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This is an example of what type of measurement?
self-report measurement
: Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez gives the measure to a group of participants on the first day of the semester and again on the last day of the semester. She then compares the scores between the two time points. This is a test of which of the following?
test-retest reliability
Edward believes that there are a lot of differences between men and women on a variety of different dimensions. He believes this because when he thinks about books that have been written on men and women, he can quickly recall only books that say men and women are different (e.g., Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus) and cannot recall any that say men and women are the same. His reliance on what comes to mind is an example of which of the following?
the availability heuristic
If a sample is biased, then it is ________ the population of interest.
unrepresentative of
Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, "I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Dr. Rodriquez is concerned whether the measure will really measure narcissism or if it will measure some other related concept. She is concerned about the scale's
validity
Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Men Should Avoid Rock Music When Playing Board Games." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Fancourt, Burton, & Williamon, 2016.) In the study, men and women played the game "Operation" when listening to different types of music. Male participants performed worse when listening to AC/DC than when listening to Mozart, but female participants' performance did not differ based on music. In this study, the authors were interested in participants' board game performance. Which of the following would be a reasonable operational definition of performance?
whether participants won against a partner
Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. 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 and non-gamblers. Which of the following options below could he also do to get evidence for criterion validity?
correlate the measure with a behavior, such as amount of money lost in a casino during the past year
: Dr. Kang, 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 all the 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. Kang's study?
the number of words remembered
Dr. Kang, 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 all the 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. Kang's study?
the number of words remembered