Midterm practice exam

Asking many similar questions when trying to measure a concept is done to

cancel out measurement error.

Compared with doing a generic internet search, why is PsycINFO a superior way to find scientific sources?

It searches only sources in psychology and related fields.

Why is plagiarism a violation of ethics?

It violates an APA standard.

Which of the following is a reason that a journalist may misrepresent a psychology study in a magazine?

Journalists may not personally have the scientific background to understand the study.

Suppose you hypothesize that all children have an imaginary friend at some point during their preschool years. You talk to twenty children, all of whom say that they have or have had an imaginary friend. Does your finding support your hypothesis?

No, because you have not confirmed the presence of an imaginary friend for all children.

Which of the following ethical violations proposed by the Belmont Report was NOT committed in the Tuskegee Study?

Participants were not given monetary payments for their time.

Angel reads about a study in which smartphone use is associated with migraine headaches. He says, "Well, that study is not valid because I use a smartphone more than anyone I know, and I never get migraines." Based on his comment, Angel may be forgetting which of the following?

Science is probabilistic.

Which of the following is true of operational definitions?

Some psychological concepts are more difficult to operationally define than others.

Which of the following is true of variables?

Some variables can be either manipulated or measured.

In developing a measure of "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." What should Dr. Jonason do to improve the construct validity of this question?

Split up the question into two separate questions.

Which of the following is a primary reason that psychologists might fabricate or falsify their data?

They feel pressure to publish findings.

Why are double-barreled questions problematic?

They may have poor construct validity.

When conducting animal research, which guideline states that alternatives to animal research should be considered?

replacement

In a scatterplot, the direction of the relationship can be seen by the

slope of the line.

Mrs. Raynor, a school psychologist, tracks the number of students that are reported by teachers as having concerning behaviors in the classroom. At the end of the year, she calculated that 12.4% of the students in her school have been identified as having behaviors that impact their performance in the classroom. She understands that there is a margin of error to this estimate and reports that the number of children who have behavior problems at school may be as low as 10.2% and as high as 14.6%. What is the term for the calculated range of 10.2% to 14.6%?

the confidence interval

A scientist is most likely to accept a theory when

the findings of replicated studies are consistent with the theory.

Hannah just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project. What information might she get out of reading the references section of her article?

the name of an article that researched a similar topic

The belief that the participants in a research study should be representative of the type of people who would also benefit from the findings of the research stems from which principle of the Belmont Report?

the principle of justice

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. How many measured variables are included in this study?

two

What is the best way to balance characteristics about participants that can lead to alternative explanations for findings?

random assignment

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

An advertising executive

Which of the following has been used as a defense of animal research by animal researchers?

Animal research has resulted in many benefits to both animals and humans.

A group of students recorded the amount of time they studied for an exam in their research methods course and the grade they received on the exam. The scatter plot shows a positive, linear relationship. What statement best describes this relationship between time spent studying and exam grade?

As study time increased, exam grades increased.

Which of the following questions assesses internal validity when evaluating causal claims?

Did the researcher randomly assign participants?

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

It is important to communicate new scientific findings that can advance the field of psychology.

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 feel threatened by racism, men of color feel 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?

Which of the following is the reason that scientific journals use peer review?

It ensures that the studies published are of the highest quality.

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.

Both PsycINFO and Google Scholar

allow you to identify journal articles on a specific topic.

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

Which of the following allow us to make strong predictions using association claims?

both strong positive associations and strong negative associations

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

According to its conceptual definition, a variable should be related to a particular behavior. If a researcher is able to demonstrate that his measure of the variable is related to the behavior, then he has established which of the following?

criterion validity

A study suggesting a link between the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism led to reduced vaccination rates and increased rates of measles. This example demonstrates the serious implications of

data falsification/fabrication.

When your scale does not correlate with other, unrelated procedures or scales, it has ________ validity.

discriminant

Dr. Pierre is interested in studying levels of anxiety in children who have lived through a major natural disaster. As she plans her study, she is considering various operational definitions of anxiety. Which of the following is an example of an operational definition for anxiety that she could consider?

level of apprehension

Which of the following is another term for response sets?

nondifferentiation

Dr. Rodriquez is a health psychologist who is interested in studying the effects of cannabidiol (CBD) oil on perceptions of pain in college student athletes with sports injuries. She became interested in studying this topic after hearing multiple claims by the media that CBD oil was effective in treating pain. However, she could not find any empirical studies that reported findings of the effectiveness for CBD oil for sports injuries. Her decision to conduct a study to test the media claims is an example of which of Merton's scientific norms?

organized skepticism

What is the primary purpose of peer review?

to ensure the relevance, accuracy, and integrity of the content

RESEARCH STUDY 6.2: 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. 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. This technique is known as

unobtrusive observation.

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

using a new teaching strategy to increase academic performance in a classroom

How might a researcher deal with reactivity?

wait to begin observations

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.

What is the primary difference between researchers and non-researchers?

Researchers test their intuition with systematic, empirical observations.

When researchers conduct an experiment comparing two different treatment conditions, they are likely to be more concerned with ________ validity than ________ validity.

internal; external

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. Imagine that Dr. Kushner is a clinical psychologist who volunteers his time at a local prison counseling several inmates. Because of his connections there, he is considering using prisoners as his participants. Why is this choice potentially problematic?

According to the Belmont Report, prisoners are entitled to special protection.

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. If Dr. Kang decided against using random assignment, which of the following would be threatened?

the internal validity of the study