Research methods quiz questions
the cornerstone of psychology as an empirical science is
collecting data to test a prediction based on theory
Indra wants to investigate the relationship between job status (whether or not they have a job) and grades among college students. She goes to the student center and hands out a survey with two questions about job status and GPA. She finds that at her institution, students with jobs have higher grades than students without jobs. Which of the following variable could be an alternative explanation for the association between job status and grades?
conscientiousness
psychologists are empirical scientists; therefore
data is used to test a theory whether a theory makes the correct predictions
what is the possible range for raw beta coefficients?
depends on predictor and dependent variable
When calculating the sum of squares with the definition formula, each deviation is squared in order to...
eliminate negative signs from deviation scores
In a regression equation, your b (beta/slope) is 2, and your a (intercept) is 1. How would we state the b in words?
every 1 unit increase in X corresponds with a 2 unit increase in Y
What is meant by the characteristic of exhaustiveness in the frequency table bins?
every item fits into a bin
You test your hypothesis that greater time outdoors is related to less anxiety. Your correlation is r = -.40, p=.08. Your conclusion should be to:
fail to reject the null hypothesis
Which of the following is NOT a way to deal with observer bias?
measuring the behavior unobtrusively
playing violent video games is associated with aggressive behavior because children model what they see in video games: what type of prediction is this?
mediator
Playing violent video games is associated with aggressive behavior very strongly among teenagers, but less strongly among young adults. what type of prediction is this?
moderator
Given a sample of 10 and a sample of 100, which sample standard deviation will be adjusted more with the correction for degrees of freedom with n-1?
n=10
Dr. Demir-Lira is interested in examining if there is a correlation between the number of Facebook friends one has and his/her self-esteem. She collects a sample of 800 students from the quad. John interested in this question collects data from a sample of 80 students. Ariel collects data from 8 students to address the same question. Sojeong collects data from 8000 students. Whose confidence interval is likely largest?
n=8
Barry is studying the effects of a major natural disaster on people living nearby. He finds that many of the victims are depressed and show stress-related symptoms. Why can't Barry conclude that the natural disaster caused the depression and stress-related symptoms?
no comparison group
which part of the equation determines how much variability in X is shared with variability of Y?
numerator
A psychology professor wants to measure how often parents read to their children and how much the parent and child interact during the reading process. The best measurement approach would be:
observation
In the hockey study example, what kind of bias would it be if the raters had read the news reports about fans being negative towards youth players, in particular male fans and this affected how researchers/observers coded the audiotapes of fan comments?
observer bias
Playing violent video games is associated with aggressive behavior because people who play violent video games have more aggressive parents. These aggressive parents are more likely to allow their kids to play violent games and to accept aggressive behavior in their children. what type of predicted model is this?
third variable
T or F: multivariate correlational designs are often used when it is impossible to conduct an experiment
true
T or F: multivariate designs cannot be used to establish the case for causation
true
Why is there asymmetry in reliability and validity? (Why can a reliable measure by invalid, but a valid measure can't be unreliable?)
unreliable measures provide inconsistent data
Dr. Johnson is surveying to understand people's attitude towards government's new health policy.She is worried that people might show fence-sitting behavior.Which of the following is an ideal approach to create the survey if she would like to use a Likert scale response format?
use even number of response options on the scale
which of the following is NOT a way to deal with reactivity?
using multiple observers
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.If Dr. Sheffield's measure does not actually measure pathological gambling, his measure is said to lack which of the following?
validity
In a scatterplot, predictive errors are associated with
vertical discrepancies between dots and the regression line
In a scatterplot, predictive errors are associated with:
vertical discrepancies between dots and the regression line
Which of the following is NOT a reason why we use histograms?
we can make inferences about the population
Why is it critical that a measure has good discriminant validity?
we want to make sure we are only measuring one construct
When might open-ended questions be best for a survey?
when you're interested in socially disapproved behaviors such as drinking and driving
If the distribution of ages for college students has a mean of 23.74 and a standard deviation of 3.19, the latter number (3.19) is expressed in units of?
years
As your sample size increases...
your confidence interval gets narrower
which of the following r values indicate the strongest correlation?
-.93
Which one of the following numbers couldn't possibly be a value of r?
1.5
What proportion of scores in the standard normal curve is between a z-score of -1 and the mean?
34%
Indicate which one of the following sets of observations ‑‑each having a mean of 50‑‑has the larger standard deviation. (Calculations aren't necessary to answer this question.)
40,40, 50, 60, 60
Taking the mean of the raw deviation scores for a set of data gives you:
A mean of zero
Andrew and Olivia just finished their research project for class. They found that people with morning classes have a lower quality of sleep than those who have night classes; they conclude that morning classes are linked to poor sleep quality. Little did they know, everyone who takes morning classes in their sample drinks massive amounts of caffeine all day long and everyone with night classes never drink caffeine. what is wrong with their conclusion?
Caffeine intake is a confound
For a class project, you collect data on UIowa students' screen-time habits. How would you summarize the data on the number of hours students spend watching TV?
I need to see a histogram first
what information is not needed to calculate the z score for a score?
M.A.D
which of the following is the most direct way to control for question order effects?
Prepare different versions of the survey, varying the order of the questions
Todd is studying the effect of popularity on academic success for his research methods project. He decides to measure popularity by asking each elementary school student to tell him how many friends he or she has. He assumes that more friends means the student is more popular. Which of the following best describes this variable?
Ratio variable
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
Anton is reading an empirical article on the relations between bullying and self-esteem. Anton is concerned that the researcher made a Type 1 error. What does that mean?
The researcher concluded there was a relationship, but there isn't really one
In statistics formulas what does the value SS represent?
The sum of the squared deviation scores
Which of the following is NOT an issue with observational research?
There are few statistical techniques to analyze observational data
In previous studies, Dr. Schulenberg has established that finding meaning in one's everyday work activities can lead to greater success in the workplace (e.g., productivity, creativity). He is curious as to whether this can happen in the college classroom. Specifically, he is curious whether finding meaning in one's classroom experience can lead to greater academic performance. In the spring semester, he has his teaching assistant randomly assign half the class to write a paragraph each class period about how the material has meaning for their lives (meaning group). The other half writes a paragraph about what they did to prepare for class (preparation group). To measure academic performance, he gives the students a midterm essay exam and a final exam. What is the null hypothesis in this study?
There is no difference between the meaning and preparation group in terms of their academic performance
Vanessa claims that she sleeps better when she falls asleep to music. She has a comparison condition, 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
Why are response sets in surveys a potential problem?
We can't differentiate someone that supports everything from someone taking a shortcut
Which of the following would require us to use median instead of mean?
a positively skewed histogram
outliers can
affect the amount of shared variability, decrease r, increase r
the theory data cycle
allows researchers to refine their theories in response to new data
what kind of claim do we typically test with correlations?
association
In one of her articles, 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?
association claim
When interpreting a correlation coefficient expressing the relationship between two variables, it is important NOT to:
assume causality
which one of the following claim is frequency claim?
between 5% and 10% of the population have dyslexia
which of the following is true of the relationship between hypotheses and theories?
hypotheses are steps taken to determine if the theory is accurate
In order to measure motivation to study, Dr. Maine designs a survey with 6 items, all of which try to capture that construct. This is a test of which of the following?
internal reliability
which of the following is not an example of being a produce of research?
interpreting research about education for your local school board
In his measure of "need for cognition" (the degree to which people like thinking and problem-solving), Dr. Jonason asks his participants to rate their agreement with the following statement: "I have never not enjoyed thinking." What is the problem with this question?
it has a double negative
which of the below is NOT true of regression analyses
it is unit less and thus allows us to compare strength of association across measures
in the hockey study example, what kind of bias would it be if the raters had read the news reports about fans being negative towards youth players, in particular male fans and this affected how they coded the audiotapes of fan comments?
observer bias
college football rankings (e.g. first rank, second rank) use what measurement scale?
ordinal
Dots in scatterplots that deviate conspicuously from the main dot cluster are viewed as
outliers
what happens if one variable doesn't have any variability?
r=0
you are working on developing a test of driving intelligence that could be delivered on the internet to screen for drivers who have a high risk of accidents. An example of criterion validity for your test of driving intelligence would be:
strong correlation with number of accidents in the two years after taking the questionnaire
what does the standard error of the estimate represent?
the amount of unexplained variability
Think about the formula for r. Which of the following is FALSE regarding the calculation of the correlation coefficient, r:
the denominator can be negative
Among frequency distributions for physical fitness, the greatest variability would probably occur in the distribution for:
the general population of iowa
Which of the following is not a condition to establish causation?
the study is an observational study
Professor Horvat designs a study to assess the work satisfaction and home-life satisfaction of a group of graduate students. She administers the same measures of work and home-life satisfaction on two occasions, 1 year apart. Suppose she finds that home-life satisfaction at the first time point is strongly correlated with job satisfaction at the second time point, but that there is no correlation between job satisfaction at the first time point and home-life satisfaction at the second time point. Which statement explains why Professor Horvat can't conclude that home-life satisfaction causes job satisfaction?
there are potential third variables that might explain the relationship
Which of the following is true about z scores?
they are unit free
