Chapter 6

Which of the following is a general plan for implementing a research strategy?

A research design

A study examining the relationship between humor and memory compares memory performance scores for one group presented with humorous sentences and a second group presented with nonhumorous sentences. The participants in one group are primarily 8-year-old students and those in the second group are primarily 10-year-old students. In this study, age is potentially a(n) ________ variable.

Confounding

Cues given to participants about how they are expected to behave define which of the following terms?

Demand characteristics

Results from a research study suggest that a stop-smoking program is very successful. However, the participants who volunteered for the study were all highly motivated to quit smoking and the researcher is concerned that the same results may not be obtained for smokers who are not as motivated. What kind of validity is being questioned?

External validity

Which of the following describes a variable that exists in a study but is not being directly examined?

Extraneous

True or False: Reactivity is not a problem in studies conducted in a laboratory setting, where participants are fully aware that they are participating in a study.

False

What aspect of a study is threatened if the participants are tested in one treatment condition at one time and then tested in a second treatment condition at a different time?

Internal validity

A research study attempts to describe the relationship between self-esteem and birth order position by measuring self-esteem for each individual in a group of first-born boys, and then comparing the results with self-esteem scores for a group of later-born boys. Which research strategy is being used?

Nonexperimental

A journal article reports that a new teaching strategy is very effective for first-grade students. A teacher wonders if the same strategy would be effective for a class of third-grade students. What is the teacher questioning?

The external validity of the report

How can sensitization threaten external validity of a study?

The results may be limited to individuals who have experienced a pretest.

Which of the following questions can be addressed with the descriptive strategy?

What is the average number of text messages that a typical adolescent sends in a month?

A research design is...

a general plan for implementing a research strategy

A research procedure is...

an exact, step-by-step description of a specific research study

A threat to external validity is...

any characteristic of a study that limits the ability to generalize the results from a research study

A threat to internal validity is...

any factor that allows for a greater level of confidence in the results of a study

An extraneous variable is...

any variable in a research study other than the specific variables being studied

The degree to which your research results generalize beyond the specific characteristics of your study refers to

external validity

Experimental research studies tend to have very _______ internal validity but often have relatively _______ external validity.

high; low

The individuals in a research study differ on a variety of participant variables such as age, height, weight, IQ, and personality. The differences from one participant to another are known as_______________.

individual differences

A researcher measures mood for a group of participants who have listened to happy music for 20 minutes and for a second group who have listened to sad music for 20 minutes. If different mood scores are obtained for the two groups, the researcher would like to conclude that music influences mood. However, the happy music group was tested in a room painted yellow and the sad music group was in a room painted dark brown and the researcher is concerned that the room color and not the music may influence mood scores. What kind of validity is being questioned?

internal validity

A research study has internal validity if...

it produces a single, unambiguous explanation for the relationship between two variables

External validity refers to...

the extent to which we can generalize the results of a research study to people, settings, times, measures, and characteristics other than those used in that study