Research Methods Quizzes
Which of the following phrases would NOT indicate that a researcher is making a causal claim?
"Is at higher risk of"
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. He conducts a study to test his ideas. Assuming that his data match his theory, which of the following statements should he make?
"The data provides support for my theory"
The American Psychological Association's ethical guidelines have ________ principles and ________ standards.
5, 10
Dr. Kline 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. Kline 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 he will wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kline 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. As a psychologist who primarily does research, Dr. Kline is most concerned with which APA standard of ethics?
8
Translational research is best thought of as ________ basic research and applied research.
A bridge between
Which of the following NOT is possible?
A measure is valid but not reliable.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1 Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Female Engineering Majors' Effort on Math Problems Depends on Sex of Role Model." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, and McManus, 2011.) In the study, female students were asked by either a male math major or a female math major to complete a math test. Female students tried to solve more of the math problems when asked by a female math major than they did when asked by a male math major. This is an example of which of the following?
A measured variable
Dr. Kline 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. Kline 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 he will wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kline 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. Kline 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. The institutional review board (IRB) that reviews his committee must have which of the following as a member?
A prisoner advocate.
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
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.Refer to Research Study 1.1 to answer the following four questions.Deci and Ryan's general statement of how the three needs are related to growth and fulfillment is an example of which of the following?
A theory
A local committee that reviews research that is conducted on animals is known as:
An IACUC
Which of the following studies would probably NOT require an in-person IRB meeting to obtain approval?
An anonymous survey asking whether students want the campus mascot be changed.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1 Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Female Engineering Majors' Effort on Math Problems Depends on Sex of Role Model." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, and McManus, 2011.) In the study, female students were asked by either a male math major or a female math major to complete a math test. Female students tried to solve more of the math problems when asked by a female math major than they did when asked by a male math major. Which of the following would NOT be a reasonable operational definition of math effort?
An earnest attempt to solve math problems.
Which of the following has NOT been used as a defense of animal research by animal researchers?
Animal research requires less research funding than human research.
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 that is done specifically to add to our general understanding of psychology, like distinguishing the components of extraversion or predicting the time it takes a person to determine whether an object is a face or another object, is known as:
Basic Research
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 accurate findings.
When reading an empirical journal article "with purpose," why should you read the abstract first?
Because it provides an overview of the article.
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 experimenting?
Bias blind spot
In which of the following ways are content and face validity similar?
Both involve subjective judgments.
Asking many similar questions when trying to measure a concept is done to:
Cancel out measurement error.
Sasha believes that she is a nice person. To confirm this, she asks all her friends whether she is a nice person; they all agree that she is. Sasha concludes that a she is a nice person and says she has evidence of it. However, she does not ask any of there enemies whether they think she is a nice person. This is an example of which of the following?
Cherry-picking of evidence.
Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as:
Confirmatory hypothesis testing
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
A correlation-based statistic called ________ is commonly used to determine internal reliability.
Cronbach's alpha
Lana 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
Of the options listed below, which of the following is the last section of an empirical journal article?
Discussion
Another word for discriminate validity is _________ validity.
Divergent
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.
Which of the following people will likely NOT find it important to be a consumer of psychological research professionally?
Gardeners
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 has decided to test the discriminant validity of his new measure. He has a group of first-time Gamblers Anonymous (GA) attendants complete his measure and finds that they score higher than a group of people who do not attend the group. Which of the following results would provide evidence for discriminant validity?
He finds that the measure of gambling is not correlated with a measure of life satisfaction in the same two groups of people.
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. All of the following are important reasons for him to be a good consumer of research EXCEPT:
He will likely need to be a producer of research as well.
Which of the following is NOT true of the Belmont Report?
It was written primarily in response to medical experiments performed in Nazi-occupied Europe.
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.
Which of the following is NOT an example of physiological measurement?
Number of panic attacks a patient reports.
Which of the following ethical violations proposed by the Belmont Report was NOT committed in the Tuskegee Study?
Participants were not treated by actual doctors.
According to the Belmont Report, which of the following groups of people is entitled to special protection?
People with Down's syndrome.
Psychological scientists may choose to publish their work in all of the following except:
Popular magazines
Which of the following sources is most likely to contain only information that has been rigorously peer-reviewed?
Review journal articles
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.
Which of the following is NOT a research claim?
Teens spend too much time texting and driving.
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. Kline 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. Kline 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 he will wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kline 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. Dr. Kline's decision about the type of participants to recruit should be informed by which of the following principles of the Belmont Report?
The principle of justice.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1 Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Female Engineering Majors' Effort on Math Problems Depends on Sex of Role Model." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, and McManus, 2011.) In the study, female students were asked by either a male math major or a female math major to complete a math test. Female students tried to solve more of the math problems when asked by a female math major than they did when asked by a male math major. Which of the following is a constant in this study/headline?
The sex of the participants.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1 Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Female Engineering Majors' Effort on Math Problems Depends on Sex of Role Model." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Stout, Dasgupta, Hunsinger, and McManus, 2011.) In the study, female students were asked by either a male math major or a female math major to complete a math test. Female students tried to solve more of the math problems when asked by a female math major than they did when asked by a male math major. Which of the following is a variable in this study/headline?
The sex of the role model.
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 a majority of 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.
Research studies are superior to personal experience because:
They include at least one comparison group.
How many subcategories of quantitative variables exist?
Three
All of the following are reasons psychological scientists publish their research EXCEPT:
To get money from the journals where their work appears.
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