Research Methods
Which of the following statements/slogans best encapsulates the meaning of "Applied Research?"
"Improving the Human Condition"
Which of the following is an association claim?
"Owning a dog is related to higher life satisfaction."
Which of the following is NOT an example of coercion?
A researcher offering 3 points of extra credit to college students to participate in a study
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
In a study about eating disorders, individuals were asked to fill out a questionnaire about body image. As a follow up, a psychologist then asked each participant questions regarding their current eating habits. Which test would you use to establish validity?
Concurrent validity
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 then 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?
Discriminant validity Face validity Predictive validity
The two biases of intuition that we discussed in class and are in your text are
Faulty thinking bias and motivation bias.
Which of the following is NOT a case of scientific misconduct?
all of them are; claiming credit for another's work, fabricating data, plagiarizing another's work
Salma conducts a study and finds that her data do not completely support her theory. Which of the following statements should she avoid saying?
"My data disproves my theory."
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. In this study, the authors were interested in students' math effort. Which of the following would NOT be a reasonable operational definition of math effort?
A score on a standardized measure of math effort The number of math classes taken in college An earnest attempt to solve math problems
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. Why is this choice potentially problematic?
According to the Belmont Report, prisoners are entitled to special protection
Which of the following is an example of being a producer of research
Administering an anxiety questionnaire.
Which of the following is the reason that scientific journals use peer review?
It ensures that the studies published are of the highest quality
You and your friends go to see a speaker on campus, Dr. Darian, 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.
In the theory-data cycle, good theories eventually lead to ________
Hypotheses
What does it mean that behavioral research is probabilistic?
Inferences drawn from behavioral research are not expected to explain all cases.
All of the following are skills that you might take away from this course, EXCEPT
Learn how to perform complex statistical tests.
Dr. Hart has a theory that extroverted people have happier marriages than introverted people. To investigate this, Dr. Hart forms a "book club" for married individuals only, in which the participants gather weekly and discuss books that they have read. After 3 months, Dr. Hart then gives each participant "The Bloomberg Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire." He hypothesizes that those individuals that made frequent comments and "spoke up" during "book club" would score high on the marital satisfaction questionnaire. What is/are the construct(s) in this scenario?
Marital satisfaction and Extroversion
Which of the following is NOT an example of physiological measurement?
Number of panic attacks a patient reports
Anthony likes to eat spicy foods. His friends want to know which hot peppers are hotter than others. They give Anthony a list of hot peppers and ask him to rank each pepper's "hotness" on a scale from 0 - 100 (0 being no heat, and 100 being superhot). Anthony's friends are using a _______ type of scale to assess pepper hotness.
Ordinal
Occam's razor states that the simplest solution is the best, all things being equal. This speaks to a theory's...
Parsimony Theorizing Falsifiability
Dr. Kline plans to use deception in his study and is thinking about a debriefing session. Which of the following is true of the debriefing?
Participants must be told the reasons for the deception
Another word for hypothesis is a/an ________.
Prediction
Which statement describes the use of a ordinal scale?
Researchers asked subjects to rate their martial satisfaction on a scale from 1-10
Dr. Sheffield wants to establish the discriminant validity of his pathological gambling measure. He gives his measure and three others to a group of 100 people. Which of the following provides the best evidence for discriminant validity?
That his measure is not strongly correlated with a measure of impulsivity
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
Angela reads about a study in which cell phone use is associated with migraine headaches. She says, "Well, that study is not valid because I use a cell phone more than anyone I know and I never get migraines." Based on her comment, Angela may be forgetting which of the following?
The study has been replicated. Science is probabilistic.
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 plug in her iPod. She typically remembers to plug in her iPod 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/going to bed sooner.
To address the Belmont principle of beneficence, Dr. Kline would need to ask which of the following questions?
What can I do to decrease the potential harm experienced by my participants?
An alternative explanation for an outcome is known as a/an
confound
To evaluate how well a study supports a frequency claim, you need to focus on evaluating which of the following validities?
construct validity and external validity
Participants that score high on a scale of "extroversion" score low on scales of "shyness." This is an example of ______.
discriminant validity criterion-related validity convergent validity
________ is the approach of collecting data using your senses, so that you can use it to develop, support, and/or challenge a theory.
empiricism
Dr. Hart has a theory that extroverted people have happier marriages than introverted people. To investigate this, Dr. Hart forms a "book club" for married individuals only, in which the participants gather weekly and discuss books that they have read. Dr. Hart ends the study after 3 months but gives each participant "The Bloomberg Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire" before they depart. One month later, he has them fill out "The Bloomberg Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire" again, but sends it to them via email. He hypothesizes that those individuals that made frequent comments and "spoke up" during "book club" would score high on the marital satisfaction questionnaire. What test of reliability would you use to evaluate this study?
interitem and test-retest
When would most researchers label an act as an "invasion of privacy?"
participants are being observed in a location in which they would expect privacy
Although theories can never be _______, they can be ________ by the results of a particular study.
proved; supported
The consistency of a measure refers to its _____, while the measure's ability to measure what you believe it to measure refers to its _____.
validity; face validity reliability; inter-item correlation reliability; validity
All of the following are instances in which you can waive informed consent EXCEPT ______.
when the researcher is using children, mentally handicapped, or mentally ill participants.
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 measure
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. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of his clients and at the same time measures how many times they have been gambling in the past month. He predicts that clients who score higher on his measure will also report gambling more times in the past month. This procedure is meant to provide evidence for which of the following?
Criterion validity
You run a research study using an instrument that has a reliability score of 0.68. This reliability score is _________.
just below the acceptable level.
The availability heuristic creates a problem in our reasoning because
We do not examine all of the evidence, only what we can quickly think of.
What are the three types of behavioral measures used in research?
Observational, physiological, and self-report
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 researcher as well
Researchers place unobtrusive video recorders in the living room of 20 children. Later, coders view the tapes and code how many minutes each child spends playing video games. What type of reliability would you check?
Interrater
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 asks his participants to provide informed consent. Doing this is adhering to which principle of the Belmont Report?
The principle of respect for persons
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
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. In this study, the authors recorded how many math questions (out of 10 questions) participants tried to solve. This is an example of which of the following?
a measured variable
Which scale of measurement puts your data into categories and is primarily used to organize your data rather than analyze them?
nominal ordinal ratio
Researchers wanted to measure the degree of anxiety present during public speaking in 5th graders versus 9th graders. The researchers decided to measure the amount of nervous fidgets during the public speaking event. This is an example of a(n) __________ measure.
observational
In considering whether research is ethical, which of the following are balanced against each other?
risk to participants versus value of the knowledge gained
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
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. How many variables are mentioned in this study/headline
two
