Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

Dr. Jun is conducting an experiment that has two experimental groups. In order to control for differences among her subjects, she flips a coin and uses chance to determine which subjects belong in which group. The procedure that Dr. Jun is using to place participants in the various groups is called

Which of the following statements regarding correlation coefficients is false?

Bruce notices that on the days that he eats lunch at Archie's diner, people are less likely to ask him to join them for the afternoon coffee break. Bruce wonders why this is happening and thinks that his co-workers must assume that he doesn't want coffee after a hearty lunch. If Bruce were to use the scientific process, now that he has a tentative explanation, he would translate this into a(n)

Dr. Monitz has been able to replicate a research finding in three different countries and with both men and women. This finding is likely to be considered to be

What problems can occur when conducting naturalistic observations?

Dr. Lahore is a psychologist who is investigating the relation between stress and illness. In her research, she has observed that as stress increases, the occurrence of physical illness also tends to increase. The association between these two variables is an example of a

A procedure in which every member of a population has an equal probability of being selected to participate in the study is called

To say that a study has high external validity means that

One of the problems of after-the-fact or "hindsight" explanations is that

Sally wants to know what percentage of Canadian university students are receiving financial aid their first year in university. Sally attends a small university with a large percentage of students who commute to campus every day. Sally stands outside of the residence dining hall one weekday evening and hands out surveys to every third person entering the hall for dinner. Sally's data will be invalid because ________.

Dr. Dawson was interested in the effects of travel on cognitive development. So she asked 100 children (10-yr olds) where they had travelled and measured their cognitive development. She found that the more the children travelled, the higher their level of cognitive development. This study is best described as

Emily does a study to see if people who are learning difficult tasks are hungrier than people who are learning easy tasks. She carefully develops one task that is easy and one that is difficult, controls the temperature and noise of the room for each group, and randomly assigns people to either the difficult or the easy group. She provides each group with ice cream and observes how many people eat it in each group. There is a confounding variable in her experiment. What is it?

Dr. Kiel is designing a study to test the effectiveness of a new anxiety medication. The study includes a placebo control group and neither the participants nor the research assistants who give out the medications know whether a participant is receiving the actual drug or a placebo. This study is a good example of

An advantage of survey research is that it

Nahele has agreed to participate in a survey so he can receive extra credit in his psychology class. When he arrives, he is given a questionnaire that contains questions like "I enjoy playing team sports," "I often worry about getting things done," "I prefer to try new ways of doing things," and "I sometimes find it hard to trust other people." He is most likely taking a/an ___________ test.

The logic behind most experimental research design contains three essential steps manipulate one variable, measure whether this manipulation affects another variable, and

When the experimenter's subtle or unintentional behaviours influence the behaviour of participants in his/her experiment, the placebo effect occurs.

The Canadian Psychological Association's "Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists" does NOT require psychologists to

A researcher, who is always willing to consider criticisms of his theory and to make theoretical revisions and adjustments when the evidence supports it, is demonstrating behaviour most consistent with which key scientific attitude?

A correlation of.53 is considered to be stronger than a correlation of -.78.