Experimental Methods Test 1

Marcella is conducting a PsycINFO search for treatments for autism spectrum disorder by searching "autism treatment." However, her search is returning too many results. If she is interested in getting more specific results, Marcella could search:

"autism treatment" and "behavioral" and enter an age range of interest

Which of the following phrases would NOT indicate that a researcher is making a causal claim? Select one:

"is at higher risk of

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.If Dr. Sheffield's measure does not actually measure pathological gambling, his measure is said to lack which of the following?

. Validity

RESEARCH STUDY 1.1: Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that there are three fundamental needs that 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 only necessary 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

Which of the following is NOT possible?

A measure is valid but not reliable.

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

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

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

Abstract, Method, Results, Discussion, References

Which of the following is true of the difference between basic and applied research?

Basic and applied research have different goals.

Your friend Gaby loves reading articles about psychology studies in her monthly women's magazine. Which of the following would you tell her?

Be careful about reading those articles because they may not present findings accurately."

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

After reading the chapter, Cyril says to himself, "I am sure other people might engage in faulty thinking, but I never would." What is Cyril experiencing?

Bias blind spot

Why are convergent and discriminant validity often evaluated together?

Both involve collecting information from a lot of psychological measures of theoretical interest.

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.Dr. White publishes her findings in a scientific journal. Who is most likely to read her article?

Clinical researchers

What is the term for a researcher's definition of the variable in question at a theoretical level?

Conceptual definition

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

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 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

RESEARCH STUDY 3.4: Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B.Which of the following makes Dr. Kang's study an experiment?

Dr. Kang manipulated one variable and measured another.

If you are interested in reading an overview of peer-reviewed scientific research within a specific area, which of the following reading sources would you choose?

Edited books

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.What should Dr. White do next?

Evaluate the ways in which her study differed from previous studies that supported this theory

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

Tim tells you that the best way to make friends is by opening the conversation with a joke. He can easily recall all the friends he met by telling a joke and also the times he opened with chitchat and didn't befriend the person. If you were concerned that Tim was making the blind spot bias, what would you ask him?

Have you tested this conclusion systematically?

Dr. Smitherman insists that all his research assistants know how to be producers of research. All of the following relate to this requirement EXCEPT:

He wants to make sure they have previously been participants in research studies.

Elliott is double majoring in English and psychology. He plans on being a high school English teacher and is only majoring in psychology because he finds the classes interesting. Which of the following is an important reason for him to be a good consumer of research?

He will probably want to read research related to enhancing his teaching

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.Which of the following questions assesses the construct validity of this study?

How did the researchers measure expectations of unfair treatment?

Dr. Gonzalez is a peer reviewer for a manuscript submitted to a journal. He is likely to provide comments on which of the following?

How well the general public will understand the study

Which types of reliability can be analyzed with scatterplots?

Interrater reliability and test-retest reliability

Which of the following is a reason why it is important to be an effective producer of research?

It is important to know how to interpret the results and graphs of your study.

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

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.

Dr. Stewart is an editor of a psychology journal. She wants to ensure that reviewers give honest reviews of the papers they are asked to read. Which of the following could she do to increase the likelihood of honest feedback?

Make sure the peer reviewers are anonymous

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

Which of the following is NOT an example of physiological measurement?

Number of panic attacks a patient reports

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

Outcomes

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

PsycINFO is not free to use.

How does research overcome the problem of confounds?

Research systematically compares multiple conditions.

Which of the following sources is most likely to contain only information that has been rigorously peer-reviewed? Select one:

Review journal articles

For her research methods class, Serena plans to interview several teachers about their attitude toward teaching children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This is an example of what type of measurement?

Self-report measurement

Which of the following is true of variables?

Some variables can be either manipulated or measured.

RESEARCH STUDY 1.1: Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that there are three fundamental needs that 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 only necessary when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated.After Susan collects and analyzes her data, which of the following is the next logical step?

Susan alters or amends the theory to fit her data.

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

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 wants to establish the discriminant validity of his pathological gambling measure. He gives his measure and three others to a group of 100 people. Which of the following provides the best evidence for discriminant validity?

That his measure is not strongly correlated with a measure of impulsivity

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

The abstract and the first paragraph of the discussion

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

The article describes how a scientific study measured a variable

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?"Anton is concerned that the researcher made a Type I error. What does that mean?

The researcher concluded there was a relationship, but there isn't really one

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 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

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?

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

When they based their opinions on their intuition

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

Whether the participant drank a soda in the 24 hours prior to the study

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.The results of this study can be generalized to which of the following groups?

White women and African American men

A psychiatrist is testing a drug that treats depression. He has given the drug to all his patients, and all of them have experienced a decrease in depressive symptoms. Although this is interesting, his experience is limited because he does not have:

a comparison group that did not receive the drug

A Type I error is known as which of the following?

a false positive

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

RESEARCH STUDY 3.2: Dr. Ramon makes the following claim: "Watching television leads people to spend less time communicating with their spouses, study says." Dr. LaSalle makes the claim: "Research shows that making more money correlates with spending less time talking with your spouse."Which type of claim is Dr. LaSalle making?

association claim

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

Your friend Dominic is complaining about having to take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a test that is required to go to graduate school and is similar to the ACT and SAT. He complains, "Tests like the GRE don't really measure how well people actually do in graduate school." Dominic is questioning the ______________ of the test.

criterion validity

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.In this study, estrogen levels in participants were the ____________.

data

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

ind and read the original scientific article

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 people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group of people 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. This procedure is known as a:

known-groups paradigm

When examining the statistical validity of a frequency claim, one should look for the:

margin of error estimate.

Another word for data is a(n) _________________.

observation

Dr. Ellison finds a relation between 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

In the theory-data cycle, theories first lead to _________________.

questions

An educational psychologist is testing the discriminant validity of a new measure of numerical learning difficulties. He gives his measure to a group of students along with another measure of verbal learning difficulties, which he predicts should not be strongly related to numerical learning difficulties. Which of the following correlations would the psychologist hope to find in order to establish discriminant validity?

r = −0.18

Advice that is based on _____________ is most likely to be correct.

research

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

scatterplot

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

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

the importance and accuracy of the story

RESEARCH STUDY 3.4: Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B.Dr. Kang's decision to assign participants randomly to Group A and Group B increases which of the following?

the internal validity of the study

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?"Quinn's concern is addressing which of the following?

the study's external validity

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 3.5: 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, the article's headline is ________ because ________.

unjustified; the researcher did not study all groups of individuals who are sexist or racist