Research Methods in Psych
Which of the following is an association claim?
"Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction."
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 this argument?"
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.
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
Comparison group that did not receive the drug.
Which of Robert Merton's scientific norms describes the idea that scientists should always accurately report the findings of their study even if the findings do not support the scientist's hypotheses or theories?
Disinterestedness
Evan is double majoring in history and psychology. He plans on being a high school history teacher and is majoring in psychology only 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 have to produce research before he can consume it.
*** You and your friends go to see a speaker on campus. The speaker, Dr. Travis, 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
Which of the following is true of the relationship between hypotheses and theories?
Hypotheses are used to determine if a theory is accurate.
Which of the following is the reason that scientific journals use peer review?
It ensures that the studies published are of the highest quality.
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.
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.
Martina 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 she find this information?
Method
Which of these statements would most likely be used by a research psychologist when describing the results of a study?
My data are consistent with my hypothesis.
*** RESEARCH STUDY 2.1: Piyali 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 ("don't eat that food," "you want to be thin," etc.) in the music compared to people who do not have subliminal messages in their music. She studies 40 people and finds the following results:
She must consider all the cells
RESEARCH STUDY 1.1: 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. After Susan collects and analyzes her data, which of the following is the next logical step?
Susan designs a new study to test her new hypothesis.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.4: Dr. Gomez, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. She provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. She puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names she assigns to Group A and the last 20 she 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). She 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. Gomez's study an experiment?
The study included a manipulated variable and a measured variable.
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 present/present bias, what would you ask him?
What about the times you opened with a joke and didn't become friends with the person?
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?
Yes, because all of the data are consistent with the hypothesis.
What is the problem with being swayed by a good story?
a good story may not be supported by data
Darrien 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
Juan is asked about the best way to study for an exam. He responds that the best way to study is by making flashcards. He easily thinks of all the times he used flashcards and got an A. However, he fails to take into consideration all the times he got an A and did not use flashcards and the times he used flashcards and did not do well. His faulty thinking is an example of
a present/present bias.
*** What should the introduction of a research report include?
a summary of recent research on the primary topic of interest
RESEARCH STUDY 1.1: Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that three fundamental needs are required for human growth and fulfillment: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Based on teh work of Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001), 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.
a theory
My data are consistent with my hypothesis.
administering an anxiety questionnaire
Which of the following is an example of applied research?
an educational psychologist who looks for a way to increase math skills in eight-year-olds
A scientist is most likely to accept a theory when
an evidence-based treatment confirms the theory.
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 statements is an operational definition of "fear of snakes" that could be assessed as a structured question?
asking "on a scale of 1 to 10 how afraid of snakes are you?"
When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose,"why should you read the abstract first?
because it provides an overview of the article
After reading the chapter, Sybil says to herself, "I am sure other people might engage in faulty thinking, but I never would." What is Sybil 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
Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as
confirmation bias
Different factors that could account for significant results are called
confounds
RESEARCH STUDY 3.4: Dr. Gomez, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. She provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. She puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names she assigns to Group A and the last 20 she 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). She 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. Gomez sends her study to a journal to be published. One of the peer reviewers questions the way Dr. Gomez manipulated emotion, arguing that being exposed to emotional words does not make one emotional. The reviewer is questioning which of the following?
construct validity of the study
RESEARCH STUDY 1.2: Dr. Rodgers 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. Rodgers found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in the amniotic fluid. In this study, estrogen levels in participants were the
data
Which of the following is true of the difference between basic and applied research?
different goals
Larissa is writing her first empirical journal article. Although she thinks she knows why she found the results she did, she also wants to mention some alternative explanations for her findings. In which section will she mention these alternative explanations?
discussion
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
________ is the approach of collecting data and using it to develop, support, and/or challenge a theory.
empiricism
RESEARCH STUDY 1.2: Dr. Rodgers 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. Rodgers found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in the amniotic fluid. What should Dr. Rodgers do next?
evaluate the ways in which her study differed from previous studies that supported this theory
________ validity tends to be higher in experiments than in other types of studies.
external
How can you ensure that a popular media article accurately reflects the original research of a scientific study?
find and read the original scientific article
What is the term for the calculated range of 10.2% to 14.6%?
frequency range
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: Florence is reading her 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. Which of the following is a variable in this study?
gender of participant
What does the impact factor of a journal tell you?
how often, on average, papers in that journal have been cited
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 research was conducterd
When researchers conduct an experiment comparing two different treatment conditions, they are likely to be more concerned with ________ validity than ________ validity.
internal ; external
Vita just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project. Where should she go if she wants to look for a list of the study's hypotheses or research questions?
last paragraph of the intorduction
Dr. Ramsey-Smith 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
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: Florence is reading her 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?
manipulated variable
Larrah 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?
name of an article that researched similar topic
Scientists often say that more data are needed to draw conclusions about the accuracy of new theories and are reluctant to accept new claims without empirical support. What scientific norm does this illustrate?
organized skepticism
Mr. Bixner, 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, he calculated that 12.4% of the students in his school have been identified as having behaviors that impact their performance in the classroom. He 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 used to describe the 12.4% calculation made by Mr. Bixner?
point estimate
Dr. Brown 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
What is the best way to balance characteristics about participants that can lead to alternative explanations for findings?
random assignment
Who is responsible for deciding which validity is prioritized in a study?
researcher
*** Morris 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, Morris may be forgetting which of the following?
science is problabistic
Monique wants to make a causal claim in her dissertation. Which of the following is necessary?
she must conduct an experiment
If we cannot observe a behavior, we cannot study it. What does this statement refer to?
skepticism
What makes certain constructs harder to operationalize?
some constructs can not be manipulated
RESEARCH STUDY 3.3: Lucretia and her friends are discussing a study she read about in her developmental psychology class. In the study, the researcher made the claim that most middle school students who are bullied have low self-esteem. Manuel is also curious about the study, asking, "I wonder how strong the relationship is between bullying and self-esteem. Could you predict one from the other?" Manuel's concern is addressing which of the following?
studys statistical validity
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
RESEARCH STUDY 3.4: Dr. Gomez, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. She provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. She puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names she assigns to Group A and the last 20 she 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). She 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. Gomez'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 3.4: Dr. Gomez, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. She provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. She puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names she assigns to Group A and the last 20 she 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). She 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. Gomez's study?
the number of words remembered
What is a confidence interval constructed around?
the point of estimate
RESEARCH STUDY 3.3: Lucretia and her friends are discussing a study she read about in her developmental psychology class. In the study, the researcher made the claim that most middle school students who are bullied have low self-esteem. Anton questions the study, saying, "Which middle school students did they study? I am curious if they included both private and public school students." Anton's concern is addressing which of the following?
the studys external validity
Why are empirical and journal review articles considered prestigious publications?
they are peer-reviewed
One of the reasons that research studies are superior to personal experience is that
they include at least one comparison group
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?
third variable rule
What is the primary purpose of peer review?
to ensure the relevance, accuracy, and integrity of the content
Which of the following is a reason psychological scientists publish their research in scientific journals?
to have their results reviewed by other psychologists
According to the text, the bridge between basic and applied research is known as
translational research
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: Florence is reading her 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
Which of the following is a problem presented by the availability heuristic?
we do not examine all of the evidence, only what we can quickly think of