Psych Ch. 2

A ___ sample is one that reflects the important characteristics of the population.

representative

A ___ is a subset of individuals drawn from the larger population.

sample

What does informed consent involve?

Ensuring each participant understands the procedures, risks, and benefits of a study

A client is asked about how much alcohol he consumes on a daily basis and reports 2 drinks instead of four- is an example of:

social desirability bias

The ___ takes into account how much each score in a distribution differs from the mean.

standard deviation

Information about a specific topic obtained by administering questionnaires or interviews to many people is known as:

survey research

James dines at a restaurant with friends. When they leave they are asked to fill out a customer satisfactory questionnaire. This is an example:

survey research

The strongest advantage of survey research is:

that we can be confident although not certain that the findings are accurate if a representative sample has been utilized

Anthony observes his baby sister playing and watching television in her room. He assumes she is learning by interacting with her environment. This best describes a:

theory

Being able to evaluate the claims made in advertisements require the use of ___ skills.

critical-thinking

When people receiving a treatment show a change in behavior because of their expectations, not because the treatment itself had a specific benefit, this is known as:

a placebo effect

Monitoring blood pressure and measuring heart rate are classified as what kind of measures of variables?

Physiological

A most powerful tool for determining cause-and-effect is the:

experiment

The function of measures of variability is:

to capture the degree of variation or spread in a distribution of scores

A ___, quite simply, is any characteristic or factor that can vary

variable

True or false: A positive correlation means that higher scores on one variable are associated with lower scores on a second variable.

False; this describes a negative correlation

The ___ variable is the variable the experimenter can manipulate or control in an experiment

independent

Dr. Xerxes is conducting an experiment collecting market data on two types of cookies. It is his job to record participant responses. When participants are asked to express their preference for cookie A, Dr. X inadvertently smiles and nods. This is an example of:

the experimenter expectancy effect

What are the three essential characteristics of an experiment?

the researcher controls one or more variables, extraneous factors are controlled, the researcher measures the effect of manipulation on variables

In a distribution of number of responses to a stimulus, the researcher records the scores of 12,11,6,7,8,9,10. The mean of this distribution is:

9

Dr. Ramirez is testing the efficacy of a new drug. He has two groups, group A receives the new drug and group B receives standard therapy. Group A is the ___ group.

Experimental

Ethical guidelines for conducting animal research?

All animals must be treated humanely and the potential importance of the research must clearly justify the risks to the animals.

True or false: Researchers have found correlations between personal characteristics and degree of happiness. This means that personal characteristics cause happiness.

False; correlation does not mean causation.

Dr. Hall wants to conduct a study to test the effects of a new drug on improving blood pressure. The drug would be the ___ variable while the blood pressure would be the ___ variable.

Independent; dependent

Why is an ethics committee a necessary component of the research process?

It functions to review ethical issues in proposed research and decide if it is ethically questionable.

What are the advantages of manipulating two independent variables in the same experiment?

It is easier to observe interactions, it may better capture the complexity of real life and may be more efficient.

What are the reasons that is it important to be a critical thinker?

It is important to have a balance between open-mindedness and skepticism & critical thinking is helpful in everyday life

What are components of correlation research?

Measuring one variable (X), measuring a second variable (Y) and determining whether X & Y are related

What is the first step in the scientific process?

Observe something and ask "Why?"

What kind of measure involves recording what people are experiencing, such as their heart-rate, blood pressure and so on?

Physiological measure

What are the necessary components of scientific investigation?

Scientists are open minded, inquiring and skeptical.

When conducting an experiment, what steps are involved?

Starting out with equivalent groups of participants, measuring how the participants respond, isolating and manipulating the variable, treating groups equally except for the variable of interest

Statistics that tell up how confident we can be in making inferences about a population based on findings obtained from a sample are ___ statistics.

inferential

Drawbacks of survey research:

Surveys rely on participants' self-reports which can be distorted by several factors, survey data cannot be used to draw conclusions about cause and effect, unrepresentative samples can result in faulty generalizations about a population.

What are the limitations of hindsight?

There is no sure way to know which of the explanations is correct & past events usually can be explained in various ways.

Why do psychologists conduct research using animals?

To discover principles that shed light on human behavior & to learn about other species.

What is the purpose of the control group?

To provide a standard behavior to which the experimental group can be compared.

True or false: A negative correlation occurs when higher scores on one variable are associated with lower scores on a second variable.

True

True or false: Statistical significance means that it is very unlikely that a particular finding occurred by chance alone. Results are considered to be statistically significant only if the results could have occurred by chance alone fewer than 5 times in 100.

True

A statistic that indicates the direction and the strength of the relationship between two variables and ranges from -1.00 to +1.00 is:

a correlation coefficient

When more ice cream is consumed, there are more drownings. This is an example of:

a positive correlation

Laura is filling out a questionnaire regarding her preferences of how she would deal with specific situations. The best description of this is that it is:

a self-report

A set of formal statements that explains how and why certain events are related to one another is known as:

a theory

The scientist practitioner model emphasizes

an evidence-based approach

Marisol recently took an intelligence (IQ) test. Her intelligence is defined in terms of her performance on the IQ test. This is an example of:

an operational definition

Records or documents that already exist are known as:

archival measures

Dependent variables:

can be measured by the experimenter and depends on the independent variable

A(n) ___ study provides an excellent way to gain detailed descriptions of behavior.

case

A ___ is an in-depth analysis of an individual group, or event.

case study

The hindsight bias gives the impression that psychology is just ___ because after-the-fact explanations for almost any result are easy to arrive at.

common sense

Ethical principles:

confidentiality of participation, absence of psychological distress in participants, participants are informed about the procedures, avoidance of deception where possible, the right of participants to be fully debriefed after the study and to be given the option of obtaining further information about the topic being researched.

A threat to the validity of research:

confounding of variables

When two variables are intertwined, it becomes difficult to determine which one has influenced the dependent variable. This is known as:

confounding of variables

When two variables are predictably related, we can estimate a person's score on one variable. This is how ___ data allows us to make predictions.

correlational

In order to obtain natural and spontaneous responses in a study of the effects of caffeine, participants were not told the study was going to examine how they would respond to the caffeine. This describes:

deception

A cue that participants pick up about the purpose of an experiment or about how they are supposed to behave is known as a:

demand characteristic

In psychology, ___ research seeks to identify how humans and other animals behave, particularly in natural settings.

descriptive

The ___ procedure is one in which both participants and experimenters are unaware as to which participants are in which experimental conditions.

double-blind

Researchers must adhere to ___ principles in research to safeguard the rights of participants.

ethical

The degree to which the results of a study can be generalized to other populations, settings, and conditions is known as:

external validity

Disadvantages of a case study are:

findings are not generalizable, there may be a lack of objectivity, and it's a poor method for determining cause-and-effect

Dr. Shelby does health research and comes up with the following ___: If smoking is related to lung cancer, then people who smoke will have a higher frequency of lung cancer.

hypothesis

In research, a specific prediction about some phenomenon is a:

hypothesis

Strategies you can adopt to be a critical consumer of statistics:

look more closely at statistics that are quoted to determine what they actually mean & examine bar graphs to see if they are visually misrepresenting statistical information.

In an experiment, the researcher was unsure what caused the changes in the dependent variable. This suggests the study has ___ validity.

low

The ___ is the arithmetic average of a set of scores

mean

Half the scores in a sample are above the ___ and half are below it.

median

The ___ is the point that divides a distribution of scores in half when the scores are arranged in order from lowest to highest.

median

The ___ is the most frequently occurring score in a distribution

mode

When a researcher observes behavior as it occurs in a natural setting, this is known as ___ observation.

naturalistic

A researcher notes that students with high levels of test anxiety receive low scores on exams. This is an example of ___ correlation.

negative

Disadvantages to naturalistic observation:

observers may inadvertently influence participants, there may be bias in interpretation

Seth has volunteered to participate in an experiment where there are two groups, one is given a new drug, the other group is given a sugar pill. Seth is in the sugar pill group and says he feels better already. This is an example of a:

placebo effect

A key component is survey research is ___, which is defined as all the individuals that we are interested in drawing a conclusion about.

population

Cognitive and personality assessment is an example of:

psychological tests

Research that can involve the study of words in discussions or interviews, images in books, images in videos, or even objects and artifacts, but does not reduce observations to numbers is known as:

qualitative research

A ___ assignment ensures that at the start of a study, the groups in an experiment are equivalent.

random

The procedure in which each participant has an equal chance of being placed in the control or experimental groups in an experiment is called:

random assignment

When every member of a population has an equal probability of being chosen to participate in a survey, this procedure is known as:

random sampling