Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

In order to assess the effectiveness of a new province-wide seatbelt law,researchers collect data from the department of transportation regarding the number of traffic fatalities in the last year.This type of measurement of behaviour is called a(n):

A graph used to represent a correlation between two variables is called a _____________.

Jake and Jack are both interested in the effect of the loud music from the dorm room next door on their grades.Jake records the days and hours the music is loud and compares that information to the grades he received on exams taken the days following the loud music.Jack plays his own music loud before his first psychology exam and quietly before his second exam.He then compares his exam scores.The primary difference in the way Jake and Jack conducted their research is:

A distinction between theories and hypotheses is that:

If you are a participant in an experimental study,the procedure that insures that you have an equal chance of being in any group or condition within the experiment is called:

The research method in which the researcher observes behaviour occurring in a natural setting is called a case study.

Researchers often manipulate more than one independent variable in experiments because it better captures the complexity of human behaviour.

A researcher is interested in studying the Canadian women's beliefs about the pros and cons of sending a child to daycare.She recruits ten women from a major city in each province and territory and asks them to fill in a survey and mail it back to her.The population for this study would be:

A sample in a survey should accurately reflect the important characteristics of the population from which it is drawn.For example,if a certain population has 53% women and the sample has 53% women,then the sample is said to be a:

An advantage of using operational definitions is that:

Of the four ways of defining and measuring variables,___________ are the most vulnerable to the social desirability bias.

Internal validity represents the degree to which:

Some psychologists studied the bullying behaviour by elementary school-aged children as it occurred during school recess.They found that:

One of the differences between experimental research and correlational research is that:

A psychologist is interested in studying stress.Since stress can mean different things to different people,she decides that she would like to assess stress by measuring people's blood pressure.This psychologist has just created a(n):

Dr.Gonzalez has just completed a correlational study where he found a strong association between parental expectations and children's academic achievement.In other words,children who perform well in school tend to have parents who have high expectations of them.However,Dr.Gonzalez can't tell which variable causes the other.It may be that high expectations cause children to perform better,or that children's better performance cause their parents to have higher expectations.This particular problem is known as:

While conducting a phone survey,the interviewer asks questions in such a way that it influences and affects the answers of the people she is interviewing.This example most clearly demonstrates which limitation of survey research?

What type of research gathers information about a topic by administering questionnaires or interviews to people of an area of interest?

In correlational research,______________ refers to the fact that variable x could cause variable y,or variable y could cause variable x.

The tendency to respond in a socially appropriate manner rather than according to how a person actually thinks,feels,or behaves is called the: