Exam 14: Quasi-Experimental Research Designs

An experimenter is interested in the influence of taking a one-semester-long test preparation course on performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). She contacts high school students who have and who have not taken the course and compares their scores on the SAT exam. She finds that the students who have taken the course score significantly higher on the test. Which of the following represents the principal threat to the internal validity of this experiment?

A student gets a 99 out of 100 on her first quiz in a psychology class, but gets only a 91 on the next quiz. This is a likely example of which of the following?

Which of the following could not represent a participant variable?

Which of the following are threats to internal validity of the single-group before after design?

An advantage of a single-participant design is that

A limitation of program evaluation research is its

An experimenter decided to test the effects of a new training program by comparing the motivation of twenty employees who had participated in the program against an equivalent group of twenty employees who had not gone through any training at all. The employees were measured when they had completed the program and it was found that those who had gone through the program had much greater on-the-job motivation than those who had not. It was concluded that the difference in motivation was due to the content of the training program. The research design is

Quasi-experimental research designs are so named because

In comparison to the single-group before-after design, the comparison-group before-after design

Research designed to study intervention programs with the goal of determining whether the programs are effective in helping the people who make use of them is called

A study of parenting styles across generations samples groups of participants at ages five, fifteen, and twenty at the same time. Which of the following terms best describes this design?

Which of the following represents an example of regression to the mean?

A design in which behavior is initially measured during a baseline period, measured again after the intervention of interest begins, and then measured once more after the intervention is removed is called a

Researchers compared college students who reported they had smoked marijuana at least fifteen days a month with similar students who said they smoked five days a month at most. A day after going without marijuana, the heavy users performed significantly worse on tasks that involved sustaining and shifting attention. The research design is

Which of the following is least likely to be a threat to validity in a single-group before-after design?

An experimental design in which the dependent measure is assessed for one or more groups of individuals more than twice, at regular intervals, both before and after the experience of interest occurs is called a

A researcher is unable to retest some of his participants in a before-after design because they have dropped out of the program. This is an example of a(n) ________threat.

Quasi experimental designs are usually analyzed using

Buchanan, Tranel, and Kirchbaum (2009) studied three groups of participants, one of which had damage to the hippocampus, one that had similar brain damage but not to the hippocampus, and a control group of participants. The researchers assessed responses to the three groups both before and after they were exposed to stress. The hippocampus group showed a decrease in cortisol response to stress, whereas the other two groups shoed increases. Which of the following statistical tests was used to test the hypothesis?

A researcher tests the effects of a skills enhancement program by measuring the change in social adjustment of a group of handicapped children before and after they have completed the program against a change in adjustment over the same time period for an equivalent group of children who had not participated in any therapy. The children who went through the program showed significantly greater increase in social adjustment functioning over time. The research design is