Psych Investigation Quizzes
In which of the following ways are content and face validity similar?
Both involve subjective judgments.
Which of the following research questions best illustrates an example of basic research?
Can 2-month-old human infants tell the difference between four objects and six objects?
Bivariate association claims' failure to meet the criteria of temporal precedence and internal validity means that _____ cannot be _____.
Casual inferences, made
STUDY 8.1: Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings. · Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -0.57 (p = 0.01) · Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = 0.09, not sig. · Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = 0.36 (p = 0.04) In evaluating Dr. Guidry's study, you question the construct validity of the study. Which of the following questions would you be asking?
How reliable is the measure of daily stress?
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 behavioral research is probabilistic?
Inferences drawn from behavioral research are not expected to explain all cases.
Which validity would you be interrogating by asking: How well did the researchers measure sensitivity to tastes in the study?
Internal and external validity
Which of the following is the reason that scientific journals use peer review?
It ensures that the studies published are of the highest quality.
Dr. Jewell is interested in measuring people's attitudes toward proposed tax cuts. One of his items reads, "People who support cutting taxes are not well informed about how the government works." What is the problem with this question?
It is a leading question
Which of the following is NOT a suitable reason for using debriefing in a study?
It prevents researchers from being sued
What of the following is a limitation of PsycINFO compared to Google Scholar?
PsycINFO is not free to use.
"In the theory-data cycle, theories first lead to __________."
Questions
Suppose you hear that conscientious people are more likely to get regular health checkups. Which of the following correlations between conscientiousness and getting checkups would probably support this claim?
R=.45
Applied research
Research that is done with a practical problem in mind and whose goal is to find a solution to a particular real-world problem (outside of health care and treatment interventions).
Transitional research
Research that uses knowledge to develop and test applications to health care, psychotherapy or other forms of treatment and intervention.
Basic research
Research whose goal is to enhance the general body of knowledge, without regard for direct application to practical problems.
Which of the following is true of question wording?
Researchers may alter the wording of a question to determine if it does have an effect on the results
Your professor says that researchers do not make ethical decisions alone. What does this mean?
Researchers must consider the options of others, including institutional review board (IRB) members and peers.
Which of the following is not one of the Three R's provided by the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals?
Restoration
Online surveys commonly suffer from which of the following?
Self-selection
A study finds a correlation coefficient of r = 0.52. This number gives you information about which of the following?
Strength and direction of the relationship
Which of these associations will probably be plotted as a bar graph rather than a scatterplot?
Students are private colleges get higher GPAs than those at public colleges.
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. What is Dr. Kramer's likely population of interest?
all students he is currently teaching
Naomi is studying the effect of popularity on academic success for her research methods project. To do this, she has elementary school students rate how popular each member of their class is. She then uses this information to rank the students on popularity (e.g., John is the most popular, Vanessa is the second-most popular). Which of the following best describes this variable?
an ordinal scale of measurement
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 plans to tell his participants that the reason he is waking them up during the night is to recalibrate the EEG machine. This would be an example of which of the following?
deception through commission
Articles that could be considered journalism
do not require specialized education to read
A researcher e-mails his five-item measure of conscientiousness (e.g., "I get chores done right away," "I follow a schedule," "I do not make a mess of things") to 20 experts in personality, psychology, and asks them if they think his items are a good measure of conscientiousness. This result is an example of
face validity
A researcher asks a sample of 40 people a set of five items that are all capturing how extroverted they are. The cronbach's alpha for the five items is found to be 0.75. This result is an example of
interrater reliability
Which of the following is NOT a section or subsection commonly found in an empirical journal article?
outcomes
Which of the following is a way of preventing reactivity?
waiting for the participants to become used to the observer
Availability heuristic
"A bias in intuition, in which people incorrectly estimate the frequency of something, relying predominantly on instances that easily come to mind rather than using all possible evidence in evaluating a conclusion."
In which of the following cases might a small effect still be important?
when the study has life-or-death implications
How are quota sampling and stratified random sampling similar?
Both identify subgroups that need to be studied
present/present bias
"A bias in intuition, in which people incorrectly estimate the relationship between an event and its outcome, focusing on times the event and outcome are present while failing to consider evidence that is absent and harder to notice"
What is the difference between advice from an authority and that from a researcher?
"Authorities often base their advice on intuition, while researchers rely on facts."
What does it mean to say that research is probabilistic?
"Research conclusions are meant to explain a certain proportion of possible cases, but may not explain all."
Confirmation bias
"The tendency to consider only the evidence that supports a hypothesis, including asking only the questions that will lead to the expected answer"
Which of the following graph formats is the best way to examine an association claim between a categorical variable and a quantitative variable?
A bar graph
Type I error
A false positive result in the statistical inference process in which researchers conclude that there is an effect in a population, when there really is none
What is the problem with being swayed by a good story?
A good story may not be supported by data.
A researcher's population of interest is New York City dog owners. Which of the following samples is most likely to generalize to this population of interest?
A sample of 25 dog owners selected at random from New York City pet registration records
Empirical journal article
A scholarly article that reports for the first time the results of a research study
Theory
A statement or set of statements that describes general principles about how variables relate to one another.
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
Conceptual variable
A variable of interest stated as an abstract, or conversational, level.
Independent variable
A variable that is manipulated in an experiment.
Dependent variable
A variable that is measured in an experiment
Meta-analysis
A way of mathematically averaging the effect sizes of all the studies that have tested the same variables to see what conclusion that whole body of evidence supports
In order to use the known groups paradigm to establish criterion validity, which of the following is necessary?
After testing, the groups should have significantly different scores on the measure.
Review journal article
An article summarizing all the studies that have been published in one research area
Negative association
An association in which high levels of one variable go with low levels of another variable and vice versa
Which of the following has been used as a defense of animal research by animal researchers?
Animal research has resulted in many benefits to both animals and humans
Which of the following is an example of being a consumer of research?
Attending a psychological conference
What of the following is true of the difference between basic and applied research?
Basic and applied research have different goal.
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.
If a person is asking whether the variables in an association claim are measured appropriately, _____ is being interrogated.
Construct validity
Which of the following allow us to make strong predictions using association claims?
Correct both strong positive associations and strong negative associations
Which of the following questions assesses the internal validity when evaluating causal claims?
Does the study establish temporal precedence?
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 he 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.
Why is it unethical to provide an incentive that is too large to refuse (for example, offering undergraduate students free tuition for a semester for participating in a study)?
It unduly influences people into participants.
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.
In order to study a sample of participants from only one ethnic group, researchers must first demonstrate that the problem being studied is especially prevalent in that ethnic group. This is an application of which principle from the Belmont Report?
Justice
Masked, or blind, study designs are designed to deal with
Observer bias
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 suspects that the people who will most benefit from his study are high school and college students who are asked to perform cognitive functions in various states of sleep deprivation. Given this information, what type of participants should Dr. Kushner recruit for his study?
Students from a community college
The aim of the Tuskegee Study was to examine which disease?
Syphilis
Which of the following headlines is a causal claim?
Taking a deep breath helps minimize high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression.
Which of the following is NOT a research claim?
Teens spend too much time texting and driving.
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 is true regarding interrogating frequency claims?
The chief concern is to evaluate the sampling technique.
The quality of journalists' coverage of a science story will be determined by two factors
The importance and accuracy of a story
Effect size
The magnitude or strength of a relationship between two or more variables
Looking for which of the following in a trade book will give you a hint as to its scientific rigor?
The number of references
Operational variable
The specific way in which a concept of interest is measured or manipulated as a variable in a study
Which of the following is true of operational definitions?
The specification of operational definitions is one of the creative aspects of the research process.
Parsimony
The stance that the simplest explanation of a pattern of data is usually correct.
Bias blind sport
The tendency for people to think that compared to others they themselves are less likely to engage in biased reasoning
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 condcuted 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. Which of the following is a constant in this study?
The type of game
Empricism
The use of verifiable evidence as the basis for conclusions.
Which of the following is a benefit of using a wiki to review psychological research?
The wiki page can be corrected quickly.
Dr. Smitherman conducted a study 5 years ago, and his graduate student now recommends that they conduct the study again to see if the effect still occurs. Dr. Smitherman says, ""No, I cannot do that study now; I think it is unethical."" Which of the following is NOT a reasonable explanation for Dr. Smitherman's response?
There were no ethical guidelines 5 years ago, but there are now.
"According to the text, the bridge between basic and applied research is known as"
Transitional research
"In reading an empirical journal article, what are the two questions you should be asking as you read?"
What is the argument? What is the evidence to support the argument?
When is it a good idea to base conclusions on the advice of authorities?
When authorities based their advice on research that systematically and objectively compares different conditions.
"A psychiatrist is testing a drug that treats depression. He has given the drug to all his patients, and all of them have experienced a decrease in depressive symptoms. Although this is interesting, his experience is limited because he does not have:"
a comparison group that did not receive the drug.
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 researchers recorded how many errors participants committed. This is an example of which of the following?
a measured variable
Diego is interested in examining the relationship between a person's attachment style and his or her relationship satisfaction. He finds 65 studies that have examined the topic. He combines the results of all these studies and calculates an effect size. His research is most accurately described as
a meta-analysis
When using correlation coefficients to evaluate reliability, which of the following is undesirable?
a negative correlation coefficient
STUDY 5.1: Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, "I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, " I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, "I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez gives the measure to a group of participants on the first day of the semester and again on the last day of the semester. Dr. Rodriquez is examining the scatterplot of the data she collected on the first day of the semester and the last day of the semester. On the scatterplot, she sees that the dots are very close to forming a diagonal line. This indicates which of the following
a strong relationship
Ethical decision making should be
a thoughtful balance
A research consumer __________ scientific results.
reads
The figure in this picture is an example of a ________.
scatterplot
For her research methods class, Serena plans to interview several teachers about their attitude toward teaching children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This is an example of what type of measurement?
self-report measurement
STUDY 8.1: Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings. · Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -0.57 (p = 0.01) · Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = 0.09, not sig. · Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = 0.36 (p = 0.04) Dr. Guidry realizes that the women in her study have more friends than the men in her study. This might result in which of the following
spurious associations due to subgroups
STUDY 8.1: Dr. Guidry conducts a study examining the relationship between the number of friends one has and the experience of daily stress and life satisfaction. She randomly samples 1,500 elderly men and women in Nashville, Tennessee (the state capital), located in the southern United States. Below are her findings. · Life satisfaction and experience of daily stress: r = -0.57 (p = 0.01) · Number of friends one has and experience of daily stress: r = 0.09, not sig. · Number of friends one has and life satisfaction: r = 0.36 (p = 0.04) Matt, Dr. Guidry's research assistant, is discussing the findings of the study with some other students. He claims that the experience of more daily stress causes people to have lower life satisfaction. Which of the following causal criteria did Matt meet?
the covariance of cause and effect
While reading about a research study, which of the following would tell you that an association claim is being made?
the measurement of two variables
Ethical decision making done by researchers can change in response to all of the following EXCEPT:
the possibility of additional grant funding
Who is responsible for deciding which validity is prioritized in a study?
the researcher
When evaluating the external validity of an association claim, which of the following is the most important issue to consider?
the way the sample was selected from the population
"Dr. White reads about a new theory that states that depression is caused by increased levels of estrogen in the womb. To test this theory, she conducted a study comparing the level of estrogen in amniotic fluid in individuals who were later diagnosed with depression with the level of those who did not develop depression. Dr. White found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in the amniotic fluid. Based on these results, Dr. White should conclude that
there may be factors influencing the results that haven't yet been examined that contributed to the results of studies on this topic.
1. STUDY 5.2: 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 conditions, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr. Sheffield do this?
to obtain evidence for criterion validity
