Exam 6: Causation and Experimentation

Field experiments conducted to evaluate social programs can also involve issues of informed consent.

The regression effect is a source of causal invalidity that occurs when subjects who are chosen for a study because of their extreme scores on the dependent variable become less extreme on the posttest due to natural cyclical or episodic change in the variable.

The Hawthorne effect is named after a famous productivity experiment outside Chicago. Workers were moved to a special room for a study of the effects of lighting intensity and other work conditions on their productivity. After this move, the workers began to increase their output no matter what change was made in their working conditions, even when the conditions became worse. The researchers concluded that the workers felt they should work harder because they were part of a special experiment.

When random assignment is not possible, a(n) ______ control group design is often used.

In an experiment, the group of subjects that does not receive the treatment or experimental manipulation is the ______ group.

Sample generalizability exists when ______.

Association is not a sufficient criterion on its own for establishing a causal effect.

One innovative field experiment was conducted by Pager (2007) to determine the effects of incarceration on the likelihood of ______.

Quasi-experimental designs are considered quasi-experimental because subjects are not randomly assigned to the comparison and experimental groups.

The Solomon four-group design is a version of a quasi-experiment.

The common feature of before-and-after designs is the ______.

Describe the innovative field experiment conducted by Pager in 2007. What was the research question? Why was it important? What did they find?

Testing, maturation, and regression effects are generally a problem in true experiments.

In Bushman's experiments on media violence and aggression, undergraduate psychology students were recruited to ______.

Name and describe the threats to internal validity in experiments.

Variation in one variable is related to variation in another variable is known as ______.

In this type of quasi-experimental design, experimental and comparison groups are designated before treatment occurs but are not created by random assignment.

When testing a hypothesis with a true experimental design isn't feasible, what design might they use? As part of your answer, define quasi-experimental design and describe the two major types.

A source of internal (causal) invalidity occurring when the characteristics of experimental and comparison group subjects differ in any way that influences the outcome is ______.

To examine whether prison classification actually affects inmate behavior, Bench and Allen (2003) conducted a(n) ______.