Exam 6: Conducting a Good Experiment I: Variables and Control

Describe the control technique of randomization. What is the logic of randomization, and what is its main drawback?

McKibban and Nelson (2001) assessed satisfaction with life in college students by using their scores on the Satisfaction with Life scale. What kind of dependent variable is this?

Explain why extraneous variables are so important to control.

A researcher is interested in examining the reaction times of first year students versus senior year students. She conducts her study in a room that is much colder than the rest of the building due to a heating malfunction. What is the nuisance variable in this study?

What is an extraneous variable? Give an example of a study in which there is an extraneous variable, including how you would modify the study to solve the problem.

Daniel would like to study a new way of teaching research methods. There are two sections of research methods being taught at 2pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, so Daniel has one teacher use the new way and the other teacher use the old way. At the end of the semester, he finds that students who were taught the new way had higher grades than students taught the old way. What is the extraneous variable?

Derek conducts a study in which half of the participants read a job application from a male candidate, and the other half read the same job application from a female candidate. He wants to make sure that each participant has an equal chance of reading the male job application as the female job application, so he uses the control technique known as

Describe any deception in this study.

Describe the purpose of the five basic control techniques.

Nuisance variables _________ the spread of scores within a distribution.

A researcher is interested in creating equivalent groups in her experiment. If potential extraneous variables are unknown, she should use _________ and if the extraneous variables are known, she should use __________.

What extraneous variables were controlled in this study?

Describe the control technique of balancing and give an example.

Age is considered a(n) _________ independent variable.

What is ONE of the dependent variables?

What is a dependent variable? Give examples of different types of dependent variables (correctness, rate or frequency, degree or amount, latency or duration).

Constancy can control for

Why are participant characteristics not true independent variables?

What are order effects? Describe carryover effects and give an example.

When the effects of one treatment persist and influence responses to the next treatment, the researcher has the problem of