midterm exam for rm

PROBLEM 2 Sarah, Matt, and Amy are each designing research studies for their senior theses. Sarah is interested in the rates of video game usage in population across different demographic categories (e.g. gender, race, year in college). She will send out a survey asking males to report their video game usage. Matt wants to explore the relationship between video game usage and college GPA. He will have students in PSYC 221 classes fill out surveys asking for both video game usage and GPA. Amy is interested in whether or not video games can improve spatial awareness. She will be collecting data in the lab where she will have participants play either a simple or a complex game and then measure their spatial awareness after they play games. Please match each student with the type of claim his/her study is trying to make. Matt is trying to make a(an) __________ claim.

Association

In which of the following ways are content and face validity similar?

Both involve subjective judgments.

PROBLEM 2 Sarah, Matt, and Amy are each designing research studies for their senior theses. Sarah is interested in the rates of video game usage in population across different demographic categories (e.g. gender, race, year in college). She will send out a survey asking males to report their video game usage. Matt wants to explore the relationship between video game usage and college GPA. He will have students in PSYC 221 classes fill out surveys asking for both video game usage and GPA. Amy is interested in whether or not video games can improve spatial awareness. She will be collecting data in the lab where she will have participants play either a simple or a complex game and then measure their spatial awareness after they play games. Please match each student with the type of claim his/her study is trying to make. Amy is trying to make a(an) __________ claim.

Causal

Dr. Lonsbary's study asked participants to report on their mood before completing the memory test. Her decision to include this step was done to address the study's:

Construct validity

Dr. Xi is developing a new scale to measure depression. She is concerned that her scale for depression might actually be measuring anxiety instead. Which type of validity is Dr. Xi concerned about here?

Construct validity

Javier wants his lab partner to tell him if he thinks the article Javier found for their project is appropriate. Rather than have him read the entire article, which two parts of the paper could Javier have his lab partner read to get a summary of the article?

the abstract and the first paragraph of the discussion

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

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings: • Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -.57, 95% CI [-.77, -.37] • Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = .09, 95% CI [-.27, .45] • Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = .36, 95% CI [.12, .60] Dr. Guidry submits her study for publication in a scientific journal. If one of the peer reviewers is concerned about the external validity of her study, which of the following is the most important aspect of Dr. Guidry's study to consider?

the sampling technique used to recruit the participants

How many conditions/levels of the independent variable were in Dr. Lonsbary's study?

three

Students who are interested in being consumers of, but not producers of, research might choose which of the following professions? a. An advertising executive b. A political pollster c. A clinical psychologist d. An intervention program evaluator

An advertising executive

Which of the following allows Dr. Lonsbary to conclude that she met the temporal precedence rule for causality?

Having people listen to music or silence before they wrote down the list of words they remembered

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

He must conduct an experiment.

RESEARCH STUDY 2 Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Refer to Research Study 2 to answer the following four questions. Which of the following is Dr. Ewell likely to give his research assistants to prevent observer bias?

A codebook

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 are in line with his theory, which of the following statements should he make?

"The data provide support for my theory."

PROBLEM 1From a Slate.com article entitled "Psych-Out Sexism: The Innocent, Unconscious Bias That Discourages Girls from Math and Science," published on March 1, 2011.Stout, Dasgupta, and their colleagues wanted to find out why women's outstanding performance on science and math tests in high school and college correlates so weakly with their eventual interest in pursuing careers in those fields. In high school and college, girls increasingly earn math and science grades equal to or better than the grades of their male peers. But when it comes to choosing a career in math or science, more men than women decide to walk through those open doors.In one study, the psychologists asked female students studying biology, chemistry, and engineering to take a very tough math test. All the students were greeted by a senior math major who wore a T-shirt displaying Einstein's E = mc2 equation. For some volunteers, the math major was male. For others, the math major was female. This tiny tweak made a difference: Women attempted more questions on the tough math test (comprising 10 questions) when they were greeted by a female math major rather than a male math major.In the study described above, the two variables: "sex of the math major" and "test effort" ____________

"sex of the math major" was manipulated and "test effort" was measured.

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.

When examining an association claim using a bar graph, an association is indicated by which of the following?

A difference in the height between the bars

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is conceptually 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 gives his measure to his supervisor, who is also an expert in pathological gambling. His supervisor says that his measure appears to test all the components of pathological gambling, including feeling restless when attempting to stop gambling, jeopardizing jobs in order to keep gambling, and using gambling to escape from problems and a bad mood. Given this information, Dr. Sheffield's measure has evidence of which of the following?

Content validity

Dr. Gore is conducting a survey examining people's opinions toward funding for collegiate athletics on his campus. He notices that several participants agree with all 12 questions. This could be an example of all of the following EXCEPT:

Fence sitting

PROBLEM 2 Sarah, Matt, and Amy are each designing research studies for their senior theses. Sarah is interested in the rates of video game usage in population across different demographic categories (e.g. gender, race, year in college). She will send out a survey asking males to report their video game usage. Matt wants to explore the relationship between video game usage and college GPA. He will have students in PSYC 221 classes fill out surveys asking for both video game usage and GPA. Amy is interested in whether or not video games can improve spatial awareness. She will be collecting data in the lab where she will have participants play either a simple or a complex game and then measure their spatial awareness after they play games. Please match each student with the type of claim his/her study is trying to make. Sarah is trying to make a(an) __________ claim.

Frequency

You and your friends go to see a speaker on campus. The speaker, Dr. Darian, 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 dissertation.

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings: • Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -.57, 95% CI [-.77, -.37] • Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = .09, 95% CI [-.27, .45] • Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = .36, 95% CI [.12, .60] In evaluating Dr. Guidry's study, you question the construct validity of the study. Which of the following questions would you be asking?

How reliable is the measure of daily stress?

RESEARCH STUDY 2 Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Refer to Research Study 2 to answer the following four questions. Given the scenario above, Dr. Ewell decides to collect his data at a neighborhood park. He has his two research assistants pose as a married couple having a picnic. While having their picnic, they take detailed records of the sharing behavior of the children and note whether the pairs are same sex or opposite sex. Given his use of two research assistants, he can establish the ________ of the measure.

Interrater reliability

In developing a measure of variable "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 frequently solve and enjoy solving crossword puzzles and Sudoku puzzles." What is the problem with this question?

It is a double-barreled question

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.

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. To create the measure of popularity, she then uses this information to rank the students on popularity (e.g., John is the most popular, Vanessa is the second-most popular, etc.). This way of measuring popularity is an example of:

Ordinal scales of measurement

Refer to the Research Study to answer the following eight questions. Which of the following is an independent variable in Dr. Lonsbary's study?

Participant's mood

Dr. Lonsbary is a cognitive psychologist who is curious about how mood affects memory. She recruited 60 high school students and divided them into three groups. Group A listened to a five-minute piece of music intended to make them feel happy (a song titled "Don't Worry, Be Happy"). Group B listened to a five-minute piece of music intended to make them feel sad (a song titled "Alone Again"). Group C listened to no music and instead was asked to sit quietly for five minutes (thought to make them feel neutral). When a participant would come to her laboratory, Dr. Lonsbary would greet the participant and then ask him or her to draw a card. Participants who drew a 1, 2, or 3 were assigned to Group A. Participants who drew a 4, 5, or 6, were assigned to Group B. Participants who drew a 7, 8, or 9, were assigned to Group C. The participants were then given an unlabeled CD to listen to based on their group assignment. The CD contained either the song selection or five minutes of silence. They were then escorted into a different room, where they were greeted by a research assistant who conducted the experiment. The research assistant sat the participants in front of a computer screen and told them that a list of 25 words would be displayed on the screen. They were instructed to listen to the CD with headphones while trying to memorize the list of words. All participants were given the same list of 25 words to remember. When five minutes had passed, the screen displayed a question asking them whether they felt happy, sad, or neutral. After the participant responded, a new screen was displayed asking them to type in all the words they could remember from the list of 25 words. All participants were given three minutes to type the words they remembered. Afterward, the participant was thanked and dismissed. In response to the mood question, a majority of Group A participants said they were happy, a majority of Group B participants said they were sad, and a majority of Group C participants said they were neutral in their mood. Dr. Lonsbary found the following results in response to the number of words remembered. Group A Group B Group C (Happy) (Sad) (Neutral) Number of Words Remembered 16 14 9 Group A vs. Group C Statistically significant difference d = .30 Group B vs. Group C Statistically significant difference d = .41 Group A vs. Group B No statistically significant difference d = .09 Refer to the Research Study to answer the following eight questions. 1. Which of the following is a dependent variable in Dr. Lonsbary's study?

Number of words remembered

Which of the following is an example of being a producer of research?

Observing and describing the behavior of isolated rats.

RESEARCH STUDY 2 Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Refer to Research Study 2 to answer the following four questions. Why would most psychologists have no problem with the ethics of Dr. Ewell's study?

People in a public park do not expect their behavior to be private.

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings: • Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -.57, 95% CI [-.77, -.37] • Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = .09, 95% CI [-.27, .45] • Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = .36, 95% CI [.12, .60] Which of the following conclusions can Dr. Guidry draw about the number of friends one has and life satisfaction based on her statistical analyses?

People with more friends tend to report greater life satisfaction.

Dr. Ellison finds a relation between the 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

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

Psychological variables can have more than one operational definition.

Refer to Research Study 1 to answer the following two questions. Which of the questions above is an example of a question that uses a Likert scale?

Question B

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Professor Kramer creates a survey to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes: Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He writes the following questions for his survey: A. What was your favorite part of this class? B. Please rate how much you agree with the following statement using the scale below: This was one of my favorite classes all semester. 1 2 3 4 5 Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly disagree C. Which of the following is most/least true of you? a. I work hard for all courses. b. I try only as hard as I have to. c. I work hard only when I am interested in the topic. D. How easy did you feel this class was? 1 2 3 4 5 Easy Hard Refer to Research Study 1 to answer the following two questions. Which of the questions above is an example of a forced-choice question?

Question C

RESEARCH STUDY 2 Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Refer to Research Study 2 to answer the following four questions. Given the scenario above, Dr. Ewell is concerned that the children will behave differently because of the presence of research assistants. He is concerned about:

Reactivity

Which of the following is true of the distinction between scientific journals and popular magazines?

Scientific journal articles are peer-reviewed; popular magazine articles are not.

For her research methods class, Serena plans to interview several teachers about their attitude toward teaching children who have dyslexia. This is an example of what type of measurement?

Self-report measurement

Charlotte is studying subliminal messages and weight loss. She is curious whether people will lose more weight if they hear subliminal messages that encourage weight loss (e.g. "don't eat that food," "you want to be thin") in the music on their iPods compared to people who do not have subliminal messages in their music. She studies 40 people and finds the following results: Refer to Research Study 1 to answer the following question. To conclude whether the subliminal messages have an effect, Charlotte needs to consider:

She must consider all four cells

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is conceptually 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 further, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) on Monday. He gives the measure to them again on Friday. He then compares the scores between the two days. This is a test of which of the following?

Test-retest reliability

Which of the following provides information about the statistical validity of Dr. Lonsbary's study?

The d coefficient

Which of the following tells you that an association claim is being made?

The fact that the two variables are measured

RESEARCH STUDY 1: 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 imply?

The theory may need to be amended.

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is conceptually 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 people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr. Sheffield do this?

To obtain evidence for criterion validity

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is conceptually 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. Refer to Research Study 1 to answer the following 4 questions. If Dr. Sheffield's measure does not actually measure pathological gambling, his measure is said to lack which of the following?

Validity

Vanessa claims that she sleeps better when she falls asleep to music. She has a comparison group because she has noticed that she does not listen to music every night, only when she remembers to charge her phone. She typically remembers to charge her phone 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 and goes to bed sooner.

Which of the following is an example of basic research? - a cognitive psychologist who examines people's ability to distinguish between colors based on light exposure - a sports psychologist who uses information on how we emotionally process victory to design an intervention for improving mental stamina during athletic performance - an industrial-organizational psychologist who is interested if pay increases affect employees' job commitment - a clinical psychologist who examines the effectiveness of drama therapy in helping children who have been abused

a cognitive psychologist who examines people's ability to distinguish between colors based on light exposure

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

RESEARCH STUDY 1: 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

Dr. Lonsbary's decision to randomly assign participants to the three groups was done to avoid which of the following

a selection effect

RESEARCH STUDY 1: 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. Deci and Ryan's general statement of how the three needs are related to growth and fulfillment is an example of which of the following?

a theory

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose,"why should you read the abstract first?

because it provides an overview of the article

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings: • Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -.57, 95% CI [-.77, -.37] • Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = .09, 95% CI [-.27, .45] • Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = .36, 95% CI [.12, .60] Comparing all three correlations, Dr. Guidry will be able to most accurately predict life satisfaction from the experience of daily stress because the relationship

has the largest effect size.

What type of design did Dr. Lonsbary use in her study?

independent-groups design

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings: • Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -.57, 95% CI [-.77, -.37] • Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = .09, 95% CI [-.27, .45] • Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = .36, 95% CI [.12, .60] Dr. Guidry finds that the relationship between the number of friends one has and life satisfaction is stronger for men than for women. In this study, gender (male or female) is considered a(n)

moderator

RESEARCH STUDY 1 Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings: • Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -.57, 95% CI [-.77, -.37] • Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = .09, 95% CI [-.27, .45] • Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = .36, 95% CI [.12, .60] Dr. Guidry creates a scatterplot of the relationship between the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. In doing so, she realizes there are three scores that seem to be very extreme and are nowhere near the other points on the scatterplot. Specifically, it appears that three people report very high levels of daily stress and very low levels of life satisfaction. Dr. Guidry should probably consider these scores

outliers.