Psych 295 Exam One - UTK

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."

In which of the following ways is an institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) different from an institutional review board (IRB)?

...

What is the problem with being swayed by a good story?

A good story may not be supported by data.

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?

A ratio scale of measurement

Which of the following is NOT an example of coercion?

A researcher offering three points of extra credit to college students to participate in a study

RESEARCH STUDY 5.1: 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. Dr. Rodriquez is examining the scatterplot of the data she collected on the first day of the semester and the last day of the semester. On the scatterplot, she sees that the dots are very close to forming a diagonal line. This indicates which of the following?

A strong relationship

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

Abstract, Method, Results, Discussion, References

Students who are interested in being consumers of, but not producers of, research might choose which of the following professions?

An advertising executive

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. Sasha would likely draw a different conclusion if she did which of the following?

Asked her enemies if she was a nice person

In looking at a scatterplot of interrater reliability, why would a researcher want to see all the dots close to the line of agreement?

Because it indicates that the researcher's two research assistants/raters are making similar measurements

What is the difference between data that is collected anonymously and data that is collected confidentially?

Confidential research collects participants' names but separates them from the data; anonymous research does not collect participants' names.

___________ is the approach of collecting data and using it to develop, support, and/or challenge a theory.

Empiricism

RESEARCH STUDY 5.1: 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 about the validity of the measure of narcissism recommended by her colleague. She sends a copy of the measure to the faculty members in her psychology department to look at, and they all tell her it looks like it will measure narcissism. She now has evidence of which of the following?

Face validity

How can you ensure that a popular media article accurately reflects the original research of a scientific study?

Find and read the original scientific article

Stefan wants to make a causal claim in his dissertation. Which of the following is necessary?

He must conduct an experiment.

All of the following are true of institutional review boards (IRBs) in the United States EXCEPT:

IRBs must have a psychologist as a member.

Which of the following is a reason why it is important to be a knowledgeable consumer of research?

It is important to understand whether the information you read is accurate.

Which of the following is true of the Belmont Report?

It was written at the request of the U.S. Congress.

Both James and Thomas have theories that explain why listening to classical music while reading is associated with increased recall of the material. James' theory is much simpler than Thomas'. Thomas created his theory a few months before James did. Which of the following is true?

James' theory would be considered better because it is more parsimonious.

Hannah just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project. Where should she go if she wants to look for a list of the study's hypotheses or research questions?

Last paragraph of the introduction

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

How does research overcome the problem of confounds?

Research systematically compares multiple conditions.

Your professor says that researchers do not make ethical decisions alone. What does this mean?

Researchers must consider the opinions of others, including institutional review board (IRB) members and peers.

RESEARCH STUDY 5.1: 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

Which of the following indicates that an article's claims are based on research?

The article describes how a scientific study measured a variable.

When determining whether a study should be conducted, we have to balance which two issues?

The potential risks to participants vs. the value of knowledge we can gain

The need to balance the potential costs and benefits to participants taking part in a research study is done to address which principle of the Belmont Report?

The principle of beneficence

Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumption and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a quantitative way to operationalize problem-solving ability?

The time spent solving a math problem

RESEARCH STUDY 4.1: Dr. Kushner is planning on conducting a study next semester. He is curious as to whether sleep deprivation is associated with poorer cognitive performance. For example, if you sleep poorly the night before a big exam, will you do worse? Dr. Kushner is especially curious about selective sleep deprivation, where people are kept from entering REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor brain waves, he plans to let participants sleep until they enter REM sleep and then wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner plans to let them return to sleep. As they enter REM sleep again, he will wake them again and follow the same procedure. He plans to do this through the entire eight-hour sleep session. The following morning, participants will be asked to take a sample SAT test.To address the Belmont principle of beneficence, Dr. Kushner would need to ask which of the following questions?

What can I do to decrease the potential harm experienced by my participants?

RESEARCH STUDY 4.1: Dr. Kushner is planning on conducting a study next semester. He is curious as to whether sleep deprivation is associated with poorer cognitive performance. For example, if you sleep poorly the night before a big exam, will you do worse? Dr. Kushner is especially curious about selective sleep deprivation, where people are kept from entering REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor brain waves, he plans to let participants sleep until they enter REM sleep and then wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner plans to let them return to sleep. As they enter REM sleep again, he will wake them again and follow the same procedure. He plans to do this through the entire eight-hour sleep session. The following morning, participants will be asked to take a sample SAT test.Dr. Kushner is deciding whether he needs to give participants a reason for waking them up several times during the night. He knows that he cannot tell them the real reason, but he is unsure whether he should deceive them (give them a false reason why he is waking them up) or provide them with no cover story at all. Which of the following issues should be considered most heavily when deciding whether to use deception?

Whether he can conduct the study just as well without deception

RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: 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 researchers recorded how many errors participants committed. This is an example of which of the following?

a measured variable

Diego is interested in examining the relationship between a person's attachment style and his or her relationship satisfaction. He finds 65 studies that have examined this topic. He combines the results of all these studies and calculates an effect size. His research is most accurately described as:

a meta-analysis

Which of the following statements is an operational definition of "fear of snakes" that could be assessed as a structured question?

asking, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how afraid of snakes are you?"

RESEARCH STUDY 3.3: Anton and his friends are discussing a study he read about in his developmental psychology class. In the study, the researcher made the claim that most middle school students who are bullied have low self-esteem. Clarissa questions the study, saying, "I am not sure that I am convinced. I am not sure you can really measure being bullied." Quinn also questions the study, saying, "Which middle school students did they study? I am curious if they included both private and public school students." Manish also is curious about the study, asking, "I wonder how strong the relationship is between bullying and self-esteem. Could you predict one from the other?"Why should Anton NOT interrogate the internal validity of the study?

because the study's claim is an association claim

Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as:

confirmation bias

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

confounds

RESEARCH STUDY 5.2: 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

RESEARCH STUDY 5.2: 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.To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of his clients and at the same time measures how many times they have been gambling in the past month. He predicts that clients who score higher on his measure will also report gambling more times in the past month. This procedure is meant to provide evidence for which of the following?

criterion validity

RESEARCH STUDY 3.5: Jenny reads the following headline on an online article: "If You're Sexist, People Will Think You're Racist, and Vice Versa." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Sanchez and colleagues, 2017.) This study found that members of stigmatized groups are threatened by prejudice directed at other stigmatized groups. Their results showed that White women can be threatened by racism, and men of color threatened by sexism, and that these perceptions made participants expect unfair treatment.In this study, ________ is a conceptual definition of one of their primary variables.

perceived prejudiced attitudes

James is asked about the best way to study for an exam. He responds that the best way to study is by making flash cards. He easily thinks of all the times he used flash cards and he made As. However, he fails to take into consideration all the times he made As and did not use flash cards and the times he used flash cards and did not do well. His faulty thinking is an example of:

present/present bias.

A research consumer ____________ scientific results.

reads

RESEARCH STUDY 1.2: 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.Another depression researcher reads Dr. White's findings. This new researcher is LEAST likely to:

reject the theory of what causes depression.

A helpful tool for visualizing test-retest reliability and interrater reliability is a:

scatterplot

The quality of journalists' coverage of a science story will be determined by two factors:

the importance and accuracy of the story.

RESEARCH STUDY 3.3: Anton and his friends are discussing a study he read about in his developmental psychology class. In the study, the researcher made the claim that most middle school students who are bullied have low self-esteem. Clarissa questions the study, saying, "I am not sure that I am convinced. I am not sure you can really measure being bullied." Quinn also questions the study, saying, "Which middle school students did they study? I am curious if they included both private and public school students." Manish also is curious about the study, asking, "I wonder how strong the relationship is between bullying and self-esteem. Could you predict one from the other?"Manish's concern is addressing which of the following?

the study's statistical validity

A common finding in the study of aggression is that exposure to television is associated with increased aggressive behavior in children. You are curious as to whether peer pressure is really to blame (peer pressure encourages you to watch television and peer pressure encourages you to be aggressive). You are questioning which of the following criteria of causation?

the third-variable criterion

RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: 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.Which of the following is a constant in this study?

the type of game

According to the text, the bridge between basic and applied research is known as:

translational research

RESEARCH STUDY 5.1: 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 her measure will really measure narcissism or if it will measure some other related concept. She is concerned about the scale's ______________.

validity

Dr. Hoda measures job satisfaction and number of years of education. In examining her scatterplot, she sees the cloud of points has no slope. This indicates which type of relationship?

zero association