psy 3030
If a study uses an unrepresentative sample, which of the following questions should you ask when assessing its external validity?
"Are the characteristics that make the sample biased actually relevant to what is being measured?"
Having a representative sample is most important in which of the following example claims?
"Forty-three percent of psychology majors report being frustrated by people asking them if they are psychoanalyzing them."
Which of the following is an association claim?
"Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction."
Which of the following statements about correlational studies are NOT true?
(got this wrong but) They do not usually satisfy temporal precedence.
Which of the following people would be of most interest for a small-N design?
A person diagnosed with schizophrenia
In which of the following cases would a large sample especially be needed?
A study of teenagers whose parents are both deployed overseas in the military
Which of the following is an example of being a producer of research?
Administering an anxiety questionnaire
Why do studies that use probability samples have excellent external validity?
All members of the population are equally likely to be represented in the sample.
Which of the following is necessary for a sample to be considered representative?
All members of the population have an equal chance of being included in the sample.
Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester—Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. What is Dr. Kramer's likely population of interest?
All students he is currently teachin
Which of the following is an example of applied research?
An educational psychologist who looks for a way to increase math skills in 8-year-olds
Which of the following is the difference between claims based on personal experience (anecdotal claims) and frequency claims?
Anecdotal claims are not based on scientific studies but frequency claims are.
Which of the following is an example of being a consumer of research?
Attending a psychological conference
Dr. LaGuardia is a cognitive neuroscientist who is interested in the effect of brain concussions on the ability to recognize faces. He conducts a quasi-experimental study in which he examines football players before and after the regular season using the Benton Facial Recognition Test (a published, widely used measure of one's ability to recognize faces) to compare those who received concussions to those who did not. He finds that players who had concussions during the regular season performed worse on the Benton Facial Recognition Test than did players who did not experience concussions. Which of the following is true regarding external validity in Dr. LaGuardia's study?
Because Dr. LaGuardia selected participants who actually experienced concussions, the study has strong external validity.
Two biases of intuition discussed in the text are:
Being swayed by a good story and being persuaded by what comes easily to mind
Scientific journals and magazines are similar in which of the following ways?
Both are trying to inform their readers.
How are quota sampling and stratified random sampling similar?
Both identify subgroups that need to be studied.
Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). Suppose Dr. Fletcher was concerned that students who choose to join fraternities/sororities are more concerned with their appearance overall. How could he test whether this type of selection threat exists?
Compare baseline levels of appearance concerns in fraternity/sorority students versus the average college student.
If a researcher is concerned about external validity, which of the following would you recommend with regard to conducting small-N designs?
Compare the results of a small-N design with other studies.
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
what is the most common sampling technique in behavioral research?
Convenience sampling
Which of the following topics would be especially well suited to a quasi-experimental design?
Do people diagnosed with a mental illness have poorer social abilities?
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
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. Based on this study, Dr. Kang can make which of the following claims?
Emotion enhances memory.
Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). In addition to measuring the group of participants who joined a fraternity/sorority, Dr. Fletcher decides to give the same measure to another group of 55 participants who decided to not join a fraternity/sorority. Doing this would help Dr. Fletcher address all of the following threats to internal validity EXCEPT:
Experimenter bias
Why might a researcher choose purposive sampling over systematic sampling?
External validity is not vital to the researcher's study.
Margaret is conducting a research study that has only two levels of an independent variable, and she decides to use __________ to make sure all possible orders are represented.
Full counterbalancing
For his research methods class project, Hiro is studying the effect of pet ownership on stress levels. Although a lot of research has been done on dog and cat owners, not much is known about other pets so Hiro decides to study bird owners. Which of the following would demonstrate a snowball sampling technique?
He asks bird owners to give him the names of other bird owners.
Stefan wants to make a causal claim in his dissertation. Which of the following is necessary?
He must conduct an experiment.
For his research methods class project, Hiro is studying the effect of pet ownership on stress levels. Although a lot of research has been done on dog and cat owners, not much is known about other pets, so Hiro decides to study bird owners. Which of the following would demonstrate a purposive sampling technique?
He recruits bird owners by e-mailing members of the National Bird Owners Association and asking for participants.
Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). If Dr. Fletcher is interested in a causal relationship between joining a fraternity/sorority and attractiveness/appearance concern, why doesn't he conduct a true experiment?
He was unable to randomly assign participants to join a fraternity/sorority.
Dr. LaGuardia is a cognitive neuroscientist who is interested in the effect of brain concussions on the ability to recognize faces. He conducts a quasi-experimental study in which he examines football players before and after the regular season using the Benton Facial Recognition Test (a published, widely used measure of one's ability to recognize faces) to compare those who received concussions to those who did not. He finds that players who had concussions during the regular season performed worse on the Benton Facial Recognition Test than did players who did not experience concussions. If Dr. LaGuardia had instead been interested in conducting a small-Ndesign, which of the following might he have done?
He would have likely collected other additional dependent measures.
Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester—Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. 43 of 50 Introduction to Neuroscience students and 46 of 48 Psychology and Law students complete the survey. Based on this information, which of the following can Dr. Kramer say?
His sample came from his population of interest
Which of the following is true of the relationship between hypotheses and theories?
Hypotheses are used to determine if a theory is accurate.
When the experimenter has different groups of participants who are placed into different levels of the independent variable, this would be considered an example of a(n) __________.
Independent-groups design
What does it mean that behavioral research is probabilistic?
Inferences drawn from behavioral research are not expected to explain all cases.
Which of the following CANNOT typically be applied to a small-Nexperiment?
Inferential statistics
Which of the following is a within-groups quasi-experimental design?
Interrupted time-series design
Which of the following is true of probability sampling?
It is the best way to obtain a representative sample.
The degree to which a quasi-experiment supports a causal claim depends on which of the following?
Its design and its results
Which of the following is a difference between participants in small-Ndesigns compared to large-Ndesigns?
Large-Ndesigns are more concerned with selecting representative participants, while small-Ndesigns focus on unique cases.
Which of the following is a difference between small-Nand large-Ndesigns?
Large-Nstudies typically gather less information about participants than small-Ndesigns.
Which of the following terms do NOT have the same meaning?
Manipulated variable
Dr. Cyril conducts a simple random sample of 500 men who became fathers for the first time in the past year. He finds that 23% of them report being unsure of their ability to be good fathers, plus or minus 4%. What is another term for the 4% value?
Margin of error
Patricia is wanting to eliminate some third variables in her research study and also address some internal validity concerns. A common statistical technique many researchers use to achieve this is called __________.
Multiple regression
James is creating a design for his research study. Based on the fact his research design contains more than two measured variables, it would be considered a __________.
NOT Cross-sectional correlation
__________ addresses the degree to which a research study supports a causal claim.
NOT Statistical validity
William is conducting an experiment to observe the method in which people take notes. The participants in both groups watched a lecture in the same room and had the same experimenter. They watched the same videos and answered the same questions about them. The researchers observed whether the participants used a laptop or notebook to take notes during the lecture. A __________ was unnecessary since the researchers were able to observe the participants to make sure they were using either a laptop or notebook.
NOT counterbalance
Which of the following designs has elements of both a within-group design and an independent-groups design?
Nonequivalent groups interrupted time-series design
A __________ is when there is a group of participants who are randomly assigned to independent variable groups and are tested on the dependent variable once.
Posttest-only design
Seeing stability in a stable-baseline design can help rule out which of the following threats to internal validity?
Regression to the mean
Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester—Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. Dr. Kramer needs to avoid which of the following if he hopes to avoid having a biased sample?
Sampling only those students who come to class frequently
Angela reads about a study in which cell phone use is associated with migraine headaches. She says, "Well, that study is not valid because I use a cell phone more than anyone I know and I never get migraines." Based on her comment, Angela may be forgetting which of the following?
Science is probabilistic.
Which of the following is an advantage of small-Ndesigns over large-Ndesigns?
Small-Ndesigns take advantage of unique cases.
Which of the following does NOT result in a representative sample?
Snowball sample
Which of the following is true of operational definitions?
Some psychological concepts are more difficult to operationally define than others.
Oversampling is a variant used in which of the following sampling techniques?
Stratified random sampling
Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester—Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. Dr. Kramer could reasonably use his sample to say something about each of the following populations of interest EXCEPT:
Students who are political science majors
Convenience sampling relies on which of the following?
Studying people who are easy to find
Which of the following does NOT result in a biased sample?
Systematic sample
Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). Which of the following would Dr. Fletcher need to do to his current study design to make it an interrupted time-series design?
Take measurements of body concern before and after joining a fraternity/sorority
Which aspect of the peer-review cycle allows for the greatest amount of honesty in reviews?
The anonymity of the peer reviewers
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
Which of the following is true regarding interrogating frequency claims?
The chief concern is to evaluate the sampling technique.
Why are techniques like cluster sampling and multistage sampling just as externally valid as simple random sampling?
They all contain elements of random selection.
Which of the following is an advantage of using quasi-experimental designs?
They allow researchers to enhance external validity.
In which of the following ways are correlational designs similar to quasi-experimental designs?
They both suffer from possible threats to internal validity
What do purposive, convenience, quota, and snowball sampling have in common?
They result in samples where some people are systematically left out.
Why do quasi-experiments tend to have very good construct validity for the independent variable?
They use real-world manipulations/experiences.
Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester—Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. Dr. Kramer plans to give his survey only to his Psychology and Law students because he sees them on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and he can spare the class time (unlike in his Introduction to Neuroscience class, which only meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays). Which of the following is true?
This will lead to a biased sample because the type of students who take Psychology and Law may be different from the type of students who take Introduction to Neuroscience.
Which of the following may lead to a biased sample?
Using people who are readily available to the researcher
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 iPod. She typically remembers to charge her iPod 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/going to bed sooner.
In which of the following scenarios should you be skeptical of an authority?
When they based their opinions on their intuition
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.
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. This is known as:
a theory
Which of the following statements about bivariate correlational studies are NOT true?
all of the above If both variables are quantitative, the data are usually depicted in a scatterplot. The variables can be either quantitative or categorical. If one variable is categorical, the data are usually depicted in a bar graph. Each of these answers are correct.
Which of the following are NOT an example of a measured variables as provided by the text?
all of the above Self-reports Each of these answers are correct. Physiological measures Behavioral observations
Research that is done specifically to solve a practical problem, like increasing memory ability or decreasing symptoms of depression, is known as...
applied research.
Which of the following four terms is not synonymous with the others?
biased sample
In a nonequivalent control group interrupted time series design, the independent variable is studied as:
both a repeated measures variable and an independent-groups variable.
Which of the following allow us to make strong predictions using association claims?
both strong positive associations and strong negative associations
The difference between a cluster sample and a stratified random sample is:
cluster samples use randomly selected clusters; stratified random samples use predetermined strata.
If researchers measure every member of a population, they have:
conducted a census.
Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as:
confirmation bias.
In a research study, there are often potential threats to internal validity. These possible alternative explanations are known as __________.
confounds
Karen decides to use manipulation checks to collect empirical data on the __________ of the independent variables of her research study.
construct valdiity
According to the text, by conducting a multivariate design, researchers can evaluate whether a relationship between two key variables still holds when they __________ another variable.
control for
Robert is having a hard time knowing what to use as his variables for his research design. His mentor explains that the first step is to choose the variable he is most interested in understanding or predicting. This variable is known as a(n):
criterion variable
Dr. LaGuardia is a cognitive neuroscientist who is interested in the effect of brain concussions on the ability to recognize faces. He conducts a quasi-experimental study in which he examines football players before and after the regular season using the Benton Facial Recognition Test (a published, widely used measure of one's ability to recognize faces) to compare those who received concussions to those who did not. He finds that players who had concussions during the regular season performed worse on the Benton Facial Recognition Test than did players who did not experience concussions. In analyzing the data, Dr. LaGuardia finds that there was no pretest difference in Benton Facial Recognition scores. However, he does find that the football players who received concussions had worse visuo-spatial awareness before the study. Which of the following threats to internal validity should he be concerned with?
design confounds
Articles that could be considered journalism:
do not require specialized education to read
After analyzing the data of his experiment, Adam realized all the scores were clustered together at the low end of the spectrum. His results are showing a(n) __________.
floor effect
In order to be considered a(n) __________, the external factor must affect most people in the group in the same direction (systematically), not just a few people (unsystematically).
history threat
Which of the following answers the question: "Does the study design rule out alternative explanations for the results?"
internal validity
In conducting quasi-experimental designs, researchers tend to give up some __________ in exchange for __________.
internal validity; external validity
Researchers may be interested in how a variable changes over the course of a major event that is scheduled outside of experimental control. This is called:
interrupted time-series design.
Plants grow taller - Not because of any outside intervention. This is just something that happens. This would be an example of a __________.
maturation threat
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:
meta-analysis
Which of the following could be an independent variable in a causal claim?
one that is manipulated
__________ refers to when there is exposure to one level of the independent variable that influences responses to the next level.
order effects
A sample is to __________ as a population is to __________.
part; entire
Christopher's research experiment has four conditions, which means there are 24 possible sequences. He wants to put at least a few participants in each order. He decides to use __________ which allows only some of the possible condition orders to be represented.
partial counterbalancing
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.
According to the text, well-designed experiments often use __________ to avoid selection effects.
random aissgnemnt
Another term for probability sampling is:
random sampling.
A small-N design that involves providing treatment and then removing treatment is known as a(n):
reversal design
A wait-list design is helpful in dealing with which of the following threats to internal validity?
selection
Richard is conducting an experiment and realizes there is a problem with the groups of participants. Each of the groups contains a certain kind of participant in one level of the independent variable that are vastly different from the other. This can create __________ with the study.
selection effects
Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). In addition to measuring the group of participants who joined a fraternity/sorority, Dr. Fletcher decides to give the same measure to another group of 55 participants who decided to not join a fraternity/sorority. After conducting the study, Dr. Fletcher finds out that the people who joined a fraternity/sorority all saw a documentary on body image sponsored by the InterGreek Council the night before recruitment began. This threat to internal validity is known as a:
selection-history threat.
Dr. Chandler is a personality psychologist who is interested in studying the characteristics of people who report being abducted by UFOs. She finds several people in an online support group for UFO abductees to participate and asks them if they can provide the names and contact information of other people who have also been abducted. Upon contacting these new participants, she asks them to refer her to even more people they may know who have been abducted. This is an example of what kind of sampling?
snowball sampling
Which of the following answers the question: "Does the study design ensure that the causal variable comes before the outcome variable in time?"
temporal precedence
Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). In addition to measuring the Body Concern of the participants who joined a fraternity/sorority both immediately before and immediately after they join, Dr. Fletcher measures them for the 3 weeks before and the 3 weeks after. This type of design would be able to better address which of the following threats to internal validity?
testing
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
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 is the independent variable in Dr. Kang's study?
the emotional or neutral content of the words
Dr. Hadden wants to conduct a study that will allow him to make claims that apply to all college students. Which of the following validities is he prioritizing?
the external validity of the study
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
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 is the dependent variable in Dr. Kang's study?
the number of words remembered
Vinai learns that people with schizophrenia have a problem labeling their emotions. Using this information, he designs a research study to examine whether teaching patients with schizophrenia to label the emotions of people they see in movie clips helps them to better label their own emotions. Vinai hopes that the findings of this research could then be used to create an intervention to treat schizophrenia. Vinai's study is an example of:
translational research.
If a sample is biased, then it is _____________ the population of interest.
unrepresentative of
A biased sample consists of too many __________ cases.
unusual
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
