PSY 217 Final Exam
Which of the following is true of variables?
Some variables can be either manipulated or measured.
Which of the following is a reasonable causal claim?
Texting while driving reduces impulse control
Shoppers often leave reviews for products that they purchased online. Which of the following best describes the external validity of product reviews on an online shopping site?
The external validity is low because this is a self-selected sample of online shoppers.
Which of the following is true of operational definitions?
The specification of operational definitions is one of the creative aspects of the research process.
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 phone. She typically remembers to charge her phone 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 and goes to bed sooner.
Random selection enhances ________ validity, and random assignment enhances ________ validity.
external; internal
If a measurement looks like it is a plausible operationalization of a conceptual variable, then it has
face validity
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 most 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 say for sure that being bullied leads to low self-esteem because they didn't measure being bullied before they measured self-esteem." Clarissa is concerned that the researcher
failed to establish temporal precedence.
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. 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
Dr. Morimoto is curious as to whether exposing people to violent video games causes them to be more aggressive. He assigns half his participants to play a video game for 5 minutes and the other half to play for 7 minutes. He finds that there is no relationship between playing the game longer and being more aggressive. What might be to blame for this null effect?
a weak manipulation
Which of the following is an example of being a producer of research?
administering an anxiety questionnaire
Which of the following is an association claim?
"Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction."
What is the problem with being swayed by a good story?
A good story may not be supported by data.
Which of the following is correct about sample size?
A large sample size still needs to be a random sample in order to be generalizable.
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.
A group of students recorded the amount of time they studied for an exam in their research methods course and the grade they received on the exam. The scatter plot shows a positive, linear relationship. What statement best describes this relationship between time spent studying and exam grade?
As study time increased, exam grades increased.
Which of the following is true of the difference between basic and applied research?
Basic and applied research have different goals.
How are quota sampling and stratified random sampling similar?
Both identify subgroups that need to be studied.
What is the difference between data that is collected anonymously and data that is collected confidentially?
Confidential research collects participants' names but separates them from the data; anonymous research does not collect participants' names.
A study revealed an unexpected finding, but the researcher wrote up the results as if that result was predicted all along. What is this referred to as?
HARKing
Which of the following is a reason that researchers typically choose to prioritize internal over external validity?
Having a confound-free setting allows them to make causal claims.
You and your friends go to see a speaker on campus. The speaker, Dr. Darian, 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.
Dr. Kline, an environmental psychologist, conducts a study to examine whether visiting zoos causes people to have more positive attitudes toward environmental conservation. He asks a group of 45 people attending the zoo on a Saturday morning abo
His study does not qualify as an experiment.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.5: Jenny reads the following headline on an online article: "If You're Sexist, People Will Think You're Racist, and Vice Versa." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Sanchez and colleagues, 2017.) This study found that members of stigmatized groups are threatened by prejudice directed at other stigmatized groups. Their results showed that White women can feel threatened by racism, men of color feel threatened by sexism, and that these perceptions made participants expect unfair treatment. Which of the following questions assesses the construct validity of this study?
How did the researchers measure expectations of unfair treatment?
When you are interrogating the external validity of a sample, which is the most important question to ask?
How was the sample collected?
Which of the following is true of the relationship between hypotheses and theories?
Hypotheses are used to determine if a theory is accurate.
What does it mean that "reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity"?
If a measure is valid, it is also reliable.
In interrogating the construct validity of a measure, which question should a researcher ask?
Is there enough evidence that this measure is valid?
Which of the following is true of p-hacking?
It can involve running a different analysis than originally proposed.
In what way does high within-groups variance obscure between-groups variance?
It causes more overlap in scores between experimental/comparison groups.
Which of the following is true of probability sampling?
It is the best way to obtain a representative sample.
Which of the following statements is true of random assignment and random sampling?
Random assignment is necessary for internal validity, whereas random sampling is necessary for external validity.
Nimah is working on her senior honors thesis and finds only one of her three hypotheses was supported. If she follows transparent research practices, what should she do with these results?
Report on all findings and hypotheses as they were originally formulated.
How does research overcome the problem of confounds?
Research systematically compares multiple conditions.
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?
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. Susan's prediction that students who have all three needs met will experience greater satisfaction with their psychology class is an example of which of the following?
a hypothesis
Dr. Granger notices that 20 students in their longitudinal study of 100 college students dropped out of the experiment over time. When they look at the missing data, they discover that those 20 students had significantly lower pretest scores than the 80 with complete data. Which type of threat is this an example of?
attrition
In looking at a scatterplot of interrater reliability, why would a researcher want to see all the dots close to the line of agreement?
because it indicates that the researcher's two research assistants/raters are making similar measurements
At which point in the scientific process does preregistration occur?
before data collection
According to its conceptual definition, a variable should be related to a particular behavior. If a researcher is able to demonstrate that his measure of the variable is related to the behavior, then he has established which of the following?
criterion validity
The absence of random assignment in any study
decreases internal validity
When your scale does not correlate with other, unrelated procedures or scales, it has ________ validity.
discriminant
Observer bias can threaten which of the following big validities?
internal validity and construct validity
When researchers conduct an experiment comparing two different treatment conditions, they are likely to be more concerned with ________ validity than ________ validity.
internal; external
Dr. Leising conducts observational studies of adolescents interacting with peers during problem-solving tasks. She records each 30-minute interaction and then has the students in her laboratory code prosocial behaviors in the adolescents as they view each video. Because she has several students coding the videos, she calculates how reliable their scores are with each other by having them all code the same videos periodically. Which type of reliability is Dr. Leising calculating?
interrater reliability
Researchers conducting an experiment can ensure temporal precedence by doing which of the following?
manipulating the cause before measuring the effect
In true experiments,________ is to dependent variable as ________ is to independent variable.
measuring; manipulating
A sample is to ________ as a population is to ________.
part; entire
According to the Belmont Report, which of the following groups of people is entitled to special protection?
people with developmental disabilities
The likelihood that a study will return an accurate result when the independent variable really has an effect is called
power
Which of the following is a threat to internal validity found in within-groups designs but not in independent-groups designs?
practice effects
The use of debriefing in a study such as Milgram's obedience study appeals to which principle of the Belmont Report?
principle of beneficence
You read research that found that first-born children tend to have higher IQs than their siblings. However, you typically earn higher grades than your older brother. Scientists might explain this discrepancy by saying that
research is probabilistic.
What can researchers do to reduce the risk of measurement error?
select measures that have high reliability and validity
Experiments use random assignment to avoid which of the following?
selection effects
In open science, open data are more concerned with ________, while open materials are more interested in ________.
statistical validity; replication
RESEARCH STUDY 7.1: 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 which of the following populations of interest?
students who have taken a class with Dr. Kramer
If Jamal wanted to test the consistency of participants' responses on a survey at two different times, what would he use?
test-retest reliability
Which aspect of the peer-review cycle allows for the greatest amount of honesty in reviews?
the anonymity of the peer reviewers
Which of the following can direct replication studies change?
the participants
Mrs. Raynor, 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, she calculated that 12.4% of the students in her school have been identified as having behaviors that impact their performance in the classroom. She 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 Mrs. Raynor?
the point estimate
In addition to the three principles derived from the Belmont Report, which of the following two principles were added in the principles put forth by the American Psychological Association?
the principle of integrity and fidelity/responsibility
One of the reasons that research studies are superior to personal experience is that
they include at least one comparison group.
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: Anderson is reading his 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
Studies that use nonprobability samples have ________ external validity.
unknown
Which of the following can help prevent testing effects?
using a comparison group
Which of the following is an example of being a consumer of research?
using a new teaching strategy to increase academic performance in a classroom
In a conceptual replication, the ________ are the same, but the ________ is/are different from the original study.
variables; operationalization
RESEARCH STUDY 4.1: Dr. Kushner 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. Kushner 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 wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner 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. Kushner is deciding whether he needs to give participants a reaso
whether he can conduct the study just as well without deception
RESEARCH STUDY 3.1: Anderson is reading his 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 authors were interested in participants' board game performance. Which of the following would be a reasonable operational definition of performance?
whether participants won against a partner
Hosea is studying the relationship between caffeine consumption and problem-solving ability. Which of the following is a categorical way to operationalize caffeine consumption?
whether the participant drank coffee in the 24 hours prior to the study