Exam 2: The Methods of Social Psychology

If a research group plans to conduct a survey poll about an upcoming presidential election in the United States, what is the minimum percentage of all likely voters that will be needed to obtain an accurate estimation of voter opinion, assuming that a random sample is obtained?

An issue of Time magazine cites a study that shows that married people are generally happier than unmarried people.Based on this study, we can assume that being married leads to being happy.

Debriefing participants after an experiment is completed is always an important step in the experimental procedure.However, debriefing is particularly important when ____________.

A researcher examines the galvanic skin response (GSR)of people holding a clear plastic jar containing a spider.She compares the GSRs of people with spider phobias with the GSRs of people without spider phobias.In this experiment, the galvanic skin response functions as ____________.

When random sampling is used, it means that

What is one of the most important differences between correlational and experimental research designs?

You read the results of a survey that reports that two-thirds of Cosmopolitan readers lost weight by "going vegan." You should not give the report of this survey much credence because

Which of the following best describes a research study that randomly assigns people to different conditions and carefully controls all of the other circumstances so that they will be the same or very similar between the two conditions?

Using deception in social psychology experiments is never allowed because it violates the basic tenets of providing informed consent to participants.

A study shows that people who watch the local evening news believe the world is more dangerous than do people who do not watch the evening news.On the basis of this study, a newspaper reporter concludes that watching the evening news leads people to believe the world is more dangerous than it actually is.This is a flawed conclusion because

The primary difference between natural experiments and standard experiments is that natural experiments

The dependent variable in an experiment is the variable that is being manipulated to produce a predicted outcome.

High school seniors are given a test that is supposed to predict scholastic performance during the first year of college.When the test results are compared with the students' actual first-year performance, there is no correlation between the test scores and performance.This is an example of poor ____________.

When an experiment has poor internal validity, which of the following might be of concern?

The function of an institutional review board is to

Assigning everyone in a population an equal chance of being selected for a survey is not necessary for generating a random sample in a survey.

An intervention is

All of the following are examples of resources used in archival research EXCEPT

An experimental research study is the best way to establish a causal effect of one variable on another variable.

An experiment that is set in the real world, and in which the participants themselves are usually unaware that they are participating in a research study, is usually described as a ____________.