Research Methods Test 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?"

Which of the following describes an abstract?

Brief Summary of an article

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

Conceptual definitions and operational definitions are the same thing?

You and your friends go to see a speaker on campus. The speaker, Dr. Phil, is an "expert" on getting into graduate school. Which of the following should make you less skeptical about his advice?

His recommendations are based on research he conducted for his doctoral dissertation.

External Validity

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

You are reading an empirical journal article and want to know whether the authors used the Big Five inventory or the MMPI to measure extraversion. Which section would you find this info?

Method

Which of the following is NOT a section or subsection commonly found in an empirical journal article?

Outcomes

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

Some psychological concepts are more difficult to operationally define than others.

Reliability

The measure yields similar scores on repeated measures

You just finished reading an empirical journal article for your research project. What info might you get out of reading the reference section of the article?

The name of an article that researched a similar topic.

In which of the following scenarios should you be skeptical of an authority?

When they have based their opinions solely on their intuition.

you have measured job satisfaction and the number of years of education for a group of employees. While examining your scatterplot, you see that the cloud of data points has no slope. This indicates which type of relationship?

Zero association

Different factors that could account for significant results are called..

confounds

Internal validity

the ability to eliminate alternative explanations for the association

temporal precedence

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

Statistical validity

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

Covariance

the extent to which two variables are observed to go together

random assignment

the use of random methods to assign participants into different experiment groups

a scatterplot is a graph

with points plotted to show a possible relationship between two sets of data.

Edited books consist of a collection of chapters

written by many different experts

What should the introduction of a research report include?

A summary of recent research on the primary topic of interest.

Which of the following is a dependent variable?

A variable that is measured

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," which section should you read first?

Abstract

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

Abstract

A scatterplot shows a positive, linear relationship between the amount of time spent studying, and the grade received on an exam. What statement best describes this relationship?

As study time increases, 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 allows us to make strong predictions using association claims?

Both strong positive associations and strong negative associations

To evaluate how well a study supports a frequency claim, you need to focus most on evaluating which of the following validities?

Construct validity and external 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

What does it mean that behavioral research is probabilistic?

Inferences drawn from behavioral research are not expected to explain all cases

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

you find that there is a relationship between the amount of sleep one gets and their problem-solving ability. 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

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

PsychINFO is not free to use.

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

Which of the following sources is most likely to contain only info that has been rigorously peer-reviewed?

Review journal articles

Which of the following is true of variables?

Some variables can be either manipulated or measured.

Which of the following is a causal claim?

Texting interferes with a driver's ability to pay attention.

You believe that there are a lot of differences between men and women on a variety of different dimensions. You believe this because when you think about books that have been written on men and women, you can quickly recall only books that say men and women are different and you cannot recall any that say men and women are the same. Your reliance on what comes to mind easily is an example of which of the following?

The availability heuristic

A common finding in the study of aggression is that exposure to television is associated with increased aggressive behavior in children. You know this relationship may not be causal because you are not sure which occurred first: watching television or being aggressive. You are questioning which of the following rules of causation?

The criterion of temporal precedence

Which of the following is a problem presented by the availability heuristic?

We do not examine all of the evidence, only what we can quickly think of.

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.

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

a variable that is manipulated

Which the following is the correct ordering of the sections of an empirical journal article?

abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references

experiment

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

The absence of random assignment in any study

decreases internal validity.

Generalizability

how did the researchers choose the study's participants, and how well do those participants represent the intended population?

Construct Validity

how well a conceptual variable is operationalized

which of the following is an association claim?

owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction

Your friend asks you about the best way to study for an exam. You say flashcards. You can think about all the times you used flash cards and got an A on the exam, however, you fail to take into consideration the amount of times you got an A on an exam without flashcards. Your faulty thinking is an example of..

present/present bias.

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

they include at least one comparison group.

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

we can determine that Variable X occurs before Variable Y