Conducting Psychology Research in the Real World

A relatively recent invention in technology is likely to become an important part of data collection in psychology research. What is it?

smartphones

As a researcher, you decide that you are very interested in peoples' everyday behavior. Therefore, you decide to use an Electronically Activated Recorder, or EAR device, to capture the acoustic diary of participants' days as they naturally unfold. In this scenario, you are:

studying daily behavior

Imagine that you are part of a study that measures heart rate and breathing throughout the day. Your heart rate and breathing only change when you exercise or are very excited. However, every time you visit the researcher to get your equipment updated, your heart rate and breathing spike. This phenomenon is referred to as:

white coat hypertension

The on-going measurement of one's biological functions that occurs as they go about their daily lives is called ______assessment.

ambulatory

There have long been criticisms of the science of psychology regarding the difficulty of measuring internal phenomena such as feelings. This is one reason why ______measures are so important: they are more widely accepted by skeptics.

ambulatory physiological

If you wanted to study a person's online behavior using their posts and contributions to a social networking website like Facebook, what would be the best way to analyze that activity?

analyze the content of the language used in their posts

To study cheating habits, Dr. Martin creates a study that asks participants to take an exam in a room where there is an open textbook on a desk, while being watched and videotaped. Because this study doesn't mirror everyday life, it would be particularly low in which quality?

ecological validity

Scientists have developed the ability to monitor many different types of physiological activity as people go about their daily lives and activities. Which of the following is NOT one of those types of ambulatory measures?

electrooculogram

Armando is participating in a one-week study examining the relationship between emotional states and eating behavior. Every time he eats something, he has to pull out a digital notebook and record how he is feeling at that exact moment. What kind of research method is being used in this study?

experience sampling method

What is the primary advantage of the day reconstruction method (DRM) in psychology research?

it eliminates the burden of collecting data repeatedly over the course of a given day

Which of the following is an accurate statement regarding the use of an electronically activated recorder, or EAR, in a research study?

it provides a series of soundbites that, when put together, can give an acoustic diary of the participant's day

Dr. Gonzalez conducts research that allows her to draw conclusions about a small group of people: the participants in her study. She now wonders whether these conclusions will apply to the larger population from which her sample was drawn. Which of the following questions is most relevant to Dr. Gonzalez's current situation?

Do my conclusions generalize into the real world?

______ is the degree to which a study ensures that potential findings apply to settings and samples other than the ones being studied.

External validity

In a research study, ______ validity addresses the degree to which that study can lead to unambiguous causal inferences.

Internal

Researchers have used several creative methods for studying behaviors and personality characteristics in both direct and unobtrusive methods over the years. Which of the following is not one of those methods?

hiring professional drivers to follow participants as they travel across the city throughout the day

After the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001, Cohn, Mehl, and Pennebaker (2004) examined blogs of users of a specific website. Through their use of ______, they determined that their participants expressed more negative emotions and were more cognitively and socially engaged for two weeks. After that period of time, these levels returned to baseline.

linguistic analyses

In a study of 16 million Facebook users researchers found that posting "I voted" was associated with increased voting in their networks. Where research methods are concerned this is an example of ______.

observable behavior

Each night before she goes to bed, Youngha's smartphone prompts her to log into a specific website and to answer several questions about her thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. She does this every day for one month as part of a research study she has volunteered for. Which method is the researcher employing?

the daily diary method

What is traditionally considered to be the "gold standard" in psychology research?

the laboratory experiment

Many students do quite well on practice quizzes or textbook exercises; however, on exam day they become anxious when their professor walks into the classroom. This phenomenon is very similar to ______ in research.

white coat hypertension