Exam 7: The Experimental Research Strategy

Research results show that participants who shout their favorite curse words over and over can endure a painful stimulus longer than participants who shout a neutral word. For this study, the dependent variable is the amount of time that the pain is endured.

A confounding variable is a variable that influences the ____.

Dr. Ramos is interested in studying how indoor temperature can influence people's sleep quality during the summer. A sample of 100 households is selected in which the residents keep their houses at 76 degrees during the summer. The residents wear a monitoring device that measures their sleep cycles for several nights to get baseline readings. Then, 50 of the homes are randomly assigned to the warm temperature condition in which the residents agree to keep their houses at 82 degrees Fahrenheit. In the other 50 houses, the residents agree to keep their houses at 70 degrees. For several nights, Dr. Ramos collects the sleep data for the people living in the houses to see how the residents' sleep patterns have changed. In this study, the independent variable is the ____.

A researcher designs a study to determine whether female preschoolers prefer sweetened or unsweetened cereal. The researcher uses a box of sweetened colorful cereal and a box of unsweetened tan colored cereal. The research finds that the group of preschoolers ate more of the sweetened colorful cereal and therefore prefers the sweetened cereal. Which two variables are confounded in this experiment?

A researcher moves an experiment out of the laboratory and into the real world. This type of research is called a ____.

In order to establish an unambiguous cause-and-effect relationship between two variables, it is necessary to eliminate the possible influence of extraneous variables.

Which technique provides useful information when there are small changes from one treatment condition to another, when simulations are used or when a placebo is used?