Research Methods of Psychology

Interestingness of a research question:

1. Answer is in doubt 2. Answer fills a gap in the research literature 3. Answer has important practical implications

Institutional Review Board (IRB)

A committee that is responsible for reviewing research protocols for potential ethical problems

Hypothetico-deductive method

A cyclical process of theory development, starting with an observed phenomenon, then developing or using a theory to make a specific prediction of what should happen if that theory is correct, testing that prediction, refining the theory in light of the findings, and using that refined theory to develop new hypotheses, and so on.

What is an operational definition?

A definition of a variable in terms of precisely how it is to be measured.

Operational definition

A definition of the variable in terms of precisely how it is to be measured

What is a protocol in psychological research?

A detailed description of the research that is reviewed by an independent committee

Confederate

A helper who pretended to be a real participant

Cateogorical variable

A quality, such as a chosen major, that is typically measured by assigning a category label to each individual

Quantitative variable

A quantity, such as height, that is typically measured by assigning a number to each individual

Hypothesis

A specific prediction about a new phenomenon that should be observed if a particular theory is accurate

Tolerance for uncertainty

Acceptance of the unknown

Inferential statistics

Allow researchers to draw conclusions about a population based on data from a sample

Extraneous variables

Any variable other than the dependent variable

A(n)______study is one that focuses on a practical problem, like effective therapies to treat PTSD. A(n)______study is one that focuses on a question of interest that may not have practical implications, like the types of music people like most.

Applied; basic

Which of these is NOT a level of risk for research according to federal regulations?

At-risk research

Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects

Basic set of laws that apply to research conducted, supported, or regulated by the federal government

Ethics

Branch of philosophy that is concerned with morality - what it means to behave morally and how people can achieve that goal

Following a study using deception, how does the researcher attempt to restore an honest relationship with the participant?

By debriefing each participant in a structured conservation

Sex, occupation, and nationality are...

Categorical variables

Which of the following is NOT an ethics code used in psychological research?

Code of Hammurabi

Theory

Coherent explanation or interpretation of one or more phenomena

Belmont Report

Concerns about the Tuskegee study and others led to the publication in 1978 of a set of federal guidelines. The Belmont Report explicitly recognized the principle of seeking justice, including the importance of conducting research in a way that distributes risks and benefits fairly across different groups at the societal level.

Basic research

Conducted primarily for the sake of achieving a more detailed and accurate understanding of human behavior, without necessarily trying to address any particular practical problem

Applied research

Conducted primarily to address some practical problem

Which of these concepts describes a tendency to focus on the evidence that seems to prove our already held beliefs while discounting evidence that would disprove our own beliefs?

Confirmation bias

Josiane has found an online test that claims to measure IQ. It consists of choosing the correct definitions for a series of words. She is concerned that it doesn't include tests of other things that are part of IQ, such as problem solving or visual-spatial ability. Which type of validity is she questioning?

Content validity

Mendoza et al. (2009) introduced a coin-rotation task as a convenient test of motor dexterity. It involves timed completion of twenty 180 degree rotations of a nickel using the thumb, index, and middle fingers. Research participants' results on the coin-rotation task are compared with their results on two widely used tests of motor dexterity: the finger-tapping task and the grooved pegboard task. Which empirical way of assessing construct validity is being used?

Convergent validity

The clinical practice of psychology does NOT include...

Creating and evaluating advertisements

Some colleges no longer require the SAT or the ACT tests; instead they base their admissions on other factors, such as a high school GPA. A major reason they have done this is they have found a low correlation between the scores on the tests and the students' freshman-year GPA. In other words, they were concerned that college entrance exams lacked which type of validity?

Criterion validity

Which statistic is used to represent the internal reliability of multiple-item self-report scales?

Cronbach's alphaBecause:Using the Correlation Coefficient r to Evaluate Reliability — Cronbach's alpha is a statistic based on the average of inter-item correlations. It is used to assess internal reliability of a scale.

When an experimenter actively lies to a participant, this is considered which of the following?

Deception through commission

Which of the following is an example of a categorical (nominal) variable?

Declared major in college

Correlation coefficient

Describes the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables

Statistically significant

Effect that is unlikely due to random chance and therefore likely represents a real effect in the population

_____ questions are questions that can be answered through systematic observation.

Empirical

Systematic empiricism

Empiricism refers to learning based on oberservation, and scientists learn about the natural world systematically, by carefully planning, making, recording, and analyzing observations of it.

Dr. Nolan-Strle gives her new anxiety measure to a group of her colleagues who are anxiety experts. They agree that the questions on the measure appear to assess anxiety symptoms. This suggests that Dr. Noal-Strle's measure has which of the following types of measurement validity?

Face validity

Type 1 error

False positive

Which of the following is NOT a common psychometric measure?

Free association measure

Falsifiable

Have to be able to show that it is false

Which of the following would NOT be considered a psychological construct?

Heart rate

Feasibility

How likely is the research question going to be successfully answered depending on the amount of time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants there will be.

Cronbach's alpha and split=half correlations are most common ways to determine

Internal reliability

Atsede has developed an intervention to improve the relationship between parents and preschoolaged children. To evaluate the effectiveness of her intervention, Atsede video records the parents interacting with their children at the end of the study. She has two research assistants watch the videos and rate the level of warmth in the interaction. Atsede then correlates the ratings of the raters. She finds a high positive correlation (r=.87) between the two raters. Which of the following types of reliability is she examining?

Interrater

Folk psychology

Intuitive beliefs about people's behavior, thoughts, and feelings

In what primary way do researchers respect participant's right to privacy?

Maintaining confidentiality

Ordinal

Measurement involves assigning scores so that they represent the rank order of individuals

Interval

Measurement involves assigning scores using numerical scales in which intervals have the same interpretation throughout

Which of the following groups is NOT recognized in the Belmont Report as entitled to special protection?

Military veterans

Type 2 error

Missed opportunity

Consider the following psychological experiment: Participants are put into either a happy or a sad mood by having them look at short videos of either an uplifting or depressing nature. They are then asked to rate pictures of people on their attractiveness. In this study, what is the dependent variable?

Mood

A definition of a variable in terms of precisely how it is to be measured is referred to as a(n)

Operational definition

Measurements on which scale allow a researcher to make a determination of whether two individuals differ and the direction of the difference but do not allow a determination of the magnitude of the difference?

Ordinal

Georgina graduated as valedictorian of her high school class because of her class ranking. What type of scale is used for the quantitative variable of class ranking?

Ordinal scale

Autonomy

Participant's right to make their own choices and take their own actions free from coercion

Stanley Milgram's famous obedience study used deception in what way?

Participants were told that someone in the adjoining room was receiving electrical shocks through actually there were no shocks

Pre-screening

Procedure to identify and eliminate participants who are at high risk

Conceptual definition

Psychological construct describes the behaviors and internal processes that make up that construct, along with how it relates to other variables

Psychometrics

Psychological measurement

Variable

Quantity or quality that varies across people or situations

Skepticism

Questioning every belief or claim, not necessarily being cynical or distrustful

Empirical questions

Questions about the way the world actually is and, therefore, can be answered by systematically observing it.

What type of scale has a meaningful zero point representing a complete absence of the variable being measured?

Ratio

Pseudoscience

Refers to activities and beliefs that are claimed to be scientific by their proponents - and may appear to be scientific at first glance, but are not.

Internal validity

Refers to the degree to which we can condiently infer a casual relationship between variables

External validity

Refers to the degree to which we can generalize the finding to other circumstances or settings

"Converging operations" means that

Repeat measurements tend to be closer to the mean that the original measurement. This can decrease test-retest reliability.

Lorenza is studying aggression in children. He administers a questionnaire to the children that asks them about their feelings of aggression. Which type of measure is the questionnaire?

Self-report

Declaration of Helsinki

Similar ethics code that was created by the World Medical Council in 1964

Confounds

Specific type of extraneous variable that systematically varies along with the variables under investigation and therefore provides an alternative explanation for the results

Confirmation bias

Tendency to focus on cases that confirm our intuitive beliefs and not on cases that dis-confirm them

Heuristics

Tendency to rely on mental shortcuts in forming and maintaining our beliefs

Dr. Adbo wants to investigate whether the physiological measure, heart rate variability, varies over time or whether it is a trait that stays stable within the same person over time. He records participants' heart rate variability once at the begining of the semester and once at the end of the semester. He finds a high positive correlation (r=.65) between the first and second time points. Which type of reliability is he examining?

Test-retest

Testable and falsifiable

The ability to test the hypothesis using the methods of science and the possibility to gather evidence that will disconfirm the hypothesis if it is indeed false.

Which of the following is an operational definition of memory?

The accuracy with which a person can retell a short story based on the number of correct details.

Measurement

The assignment of scores to individuals so that the scores represent some characteristic of the individuals

Dr. Ngandu wants to investigate whether the physiological measure, heart rate variability, varies over time or whether it is a trait that stays stable within the same person over time. He records participants' heart rate variability once at the beginning of the semester and once at the end of the semester. He finds a high positive correlation (r=.55) between the first and second time points. Which of the following would a scatterplot of these results (heart rate variability at the beginning of the semester on the x-axis, heart rate variability at the end of the semester on the y-axis look like?

The cloud of points would slop upward from left to right

What is criterion validity?

The extent to which people's scores on a measure are correlated with other variables that one would expect them to be correlated with.

Nominal

Used for categorical variables and involves assigning scores that are category labels

Which term describes the extent to which the scores from a measure represent the variable they are intended to?

Validity

Independent variable

Variable the experimenter manipulates

Dependent variable

Variable the experimenter measures

Theoretical article

When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory

Meta-analysis

When a review article provides a statistical summary of all of the previous results

Converging operations

When psychologists use multiple operational definitions of the same construct - either within a study or across studies

Beneficence

Which underscores the importance of maximizing the benefits of research while minimizing harms to participants and society

Research literature

any field of all the published research in that field

Empirical research reports

describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors

Edited volumes

have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic

Exempt research

lowest level or risk and includes research on the effectiveness of normal education activities, the use of standard psychological measures and surveys of a nonsensitive nature that are administered in a way that maintains confidentiality, and research using existing data from public sources

Professional journals

periodicals that publish original research articles

Expedited research

poses a somewhat higher risk than exempt, but still exposes participants to risks that are no greater than minimal risk

Scientific Method

process of systematically collecting and evaluating evidence to test ideas and answer questions.

Nuremberg Code

set of 10 principles written in 1947 in conjunction with the trials of Nazi physicians accused shockingly cruel research on concentration camp prisoners during World War 2

Deception in a psychology experiment is

sometimes ethical if there is no other way to study a certain phenomenon; researchers minimize the potential for the participants to be distressed by the deception, and researchers fully debrief the participant after the study.

Review articles

summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results

Reliability referes to

the consistency of a measure

Clinical practice of psychology

the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders and related problems

In the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, there were issues with...

the right to autonomy, research ethics, and informed consent

Monograph

written by a single author or group of authors and gives a coherent presentation of a topic