Ch 2

Which of these correlation has the least predictive value?

+0.10

Which correlation coefficient represents the weakest correlation between two variables

+0.31

Which of the following coefficients represents the strongest correlation between two variables

-0.85

A data set had a median value of 66, a mean value of 68, and a standard deviation of 18. Which value in the data set is most reasonably understood as an outlier

24

In a analysts testing differences between an experimental and a control group on the dependent variable, a p-value of 0.07 means there is a

7 percent chance that differences between the two samples are due to chance alone

Which of the following best represents the case study method?

A book that documents the development of a person who was diagnosed with a life threatening illness at a young age

A professor wanted to learn more about the body image concerns of young teenage girls. She randomly selected 200 girls from local middle schools to complete her questionnaire. These girls were

A representative sample

What is the primary difference between a hypothesis and a theory?

A theory is a collection of data-based hypothesis

Cases of spurious correlations are typically explained in terms of ___ variables that are __ two correlated variables

Confounding; affecting

An unethical experimenter wants to test the relationship between discomfort and aggression. On a hot day, she turns off the air conditioning in one dorm and leaves it on in another, then has her research assistants count occurrences of verbal aggression in common areas of the building. Students in the air-conditioned dorm would be the ___, and students in the overheated dorm would be the __.

Control group; experimental group

Contemporary standards of informed consent require a psychologist using human subjects in an experiment to disclose the ____ before the experiment commences

Details of any risks the subjects will face

The key purpose of an institution review board IRB is to

Determine whether a proposed study is ethical

Which approach would be most appropriate for testing the hypothesis that taking practice tests improves learning more than studying alone does?

Experimental research

You feel sick after eating leftovers you found in the back of the refrigerator. Occam's razor would favor the hypothesis that you have

Food poisoning

On an empathy questionnaire, group 1 had a mean score of 117 with a standard deviation of 14. Group 2 had a mean score of 96woth a standard deviation of 23. Therefore, ___ scores higher on average and their scores were __ spread out than scores from

Group 1; less; group 2

A group of researchers is most likely to conduct a meta-analysis if an experiment had

Had a widely replicated results and has undergone extensive variation

The principal of Occam's razor compares ___in terms of the __

Hypothesis; assumptions they make

Students ___ would be the most representative for a study of competitiveness in high school.

In a required health class

In experimental research, which of the following variables is controlled by the researcher?

Independent

When administered to subjects in an experiment, a placebo is a treatment that

Is believed to be free of medical effects

Which of the following factors would most severely reduce the usefulness of a placebo una. Controlled experiment

It is relatively easy for subjects to distinguish the placebo from a potentially effective treatment

Which of the following investigation types does not represent the descriptive method of scientific inquiry?

Laboratory experimentation

Which of the following is a measure of central tendency?

Median

A correlation of -0.80 between meditation and anxiety symptoms would indicate

Meditation predicts lower levels of anxiety

Which is the correct order of measures of central tendency, from lowest to highest, for a positively skewed distribution

Mode, median, mean

In a typical controlled experiment designed to test the effects of a new drug, __ will be administered to the ___ group

Only the placebo ; control

A depressed teenager treated with medication begins feeling better immediately, even though the medication typically takes two weeks to work. This is an example of a __ effect

Placebo

" green is the prettiest color" is a ___ hypothesis because it is ___.

Poor; not testable

A self-report measure of the personality trait of agreeable produces very similar scores each time the same person completes it. It is also strongly correlated with whether family members describe a person as friendly and cooperative. This measures appears to be

Reliable and valid

A researcher would be most likely to find a negative correlation between ___ and ___

Shyness; party attendance

The principal of Occam's razor is used to compare scientific hypotheses primarily on the basis of

Simplicity

Whether depression levels are truly lower in a treatment group than in a control group is assessed by determining the __ of the difference in scores between groups

Statistical significance

A news organization wanted to predict wou would win the next US presidential election. They sent an opinion poll to every fiftieth person in a list of students enrolled at a nearby college. Which of the following is the study population

Students at this particular college

A psychologist working at a university is interested in designing an experiment to explore the impact of stress on a woman's sleep cycle. She will use university students as subjects. In this situation, the students at her university represent a ___, which is part of the ___.

Study population; theoretical population

To identify the most popular exhibit at a science museum, visitors were asked every day for six weeks to rate how much they enjoyed each exhibit. The data we're analyzed to look for age and sex differences in exhibit preferences. This was an example of

Survey research

A researcher is designing an experiment intended to study the effects of the physical environment on reading comprehension. Which of the following factors would be best characterized as an independent variable in such experiment?

The level of lighting in settings where test subjects are asked to read

You take a job selling magazine subscriptions from home because the recruitment video says the average earnings per employee are $90k a year. You work 60 hours a week for a year and earn $30k. An internet research reveals that hundreds of people have had the same experience with this and other work-at-home schemes. How can companies legitimately claim that the average salary is $90k if most employees make less than $30k

The mean salary reflects the presence of outliers

All of the following statements are true of large data sets with negatively skewed distributions except

The mode is less than the median

A psychological test designed to measure creativity is considered a reliable tool based on whether

The same subjects would score consistently over time

In which of the following situations would a correlation be highly misleading

The variables are associated in a nonlinear pattern

A ___ is a set consistent ___ that have undergone successful testing

Theory; hypotheses

A researcher testing a new medication for attention deficit disorder randomly assigns half of the patients tog te the actual medication and half to get a sugar pill. Neither the researcher nor the patients know who is getting what

This study design will reduce unconscious bias

A good scientific hypothesis is

Tied to observable phenomena

Which of the following measures is most likely to take place at the public discourage stage of a psychological research program?

Unaffiliated psychologist will adapt and carry out similar experiments independently

The Tuskegee syphilis study raised serious concerns about ethical research because the researchers

Withheld information from test subjects about their condition

A research team was investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read a magazine article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read a magazine article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. All women in a study took a challenging math test. Researchers scored the numbers of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following was the dependent variable

Women's scores on the math test