Exam 2: Research Methods in Psychology

Are researchers obligated to respect the basic rights of research participants? If so, how is this ensured?

Which statement best captures the basic idea underlying the experimental method?

According to the ethical guidelines proposed by the American Psychological Association, if deception is used in research it must be explained to the participants by the conclusion of the research and the participants must have the opportunity to withdraw their data.

The concept of reliability applies not only to tests but also to experiments. Therefore, if the results of an experiment are reliable, this means that

With respect to psychological measurement, when measures yield data that are consistent or dependable they are referred to as ________, whereas the term ________ means that measures accurately reflects the variable or quality that they are intended to measure.

After you present your excuse for missing class, your instructor tells you that she has found that the more classes students miss, the lower their test grades tend to be. This relationship illustrates a(n)

The ethical guidelines that all psychological researchers must follow include all of the following EXCEPT that

Researchers who use self-report measures need to be aware of the limits to the usefulness of such measures. Typically cited concerns include all of the following EXCEPT that

You are about to take your first test in an introductory psychology class. Much to your surprise, the instructor hands you a test that contains ten analytical geometry problems. You would probably be able to argue that the test is not

A classmate informs you that, while conducting a naturalistic observation study of children's play behavior, she had to ask the children to limit their play activity to only one area in the playground in order to make more accurate observations. Being familiar with observational methods, you should tell her that her study did not involve naturalistic observation because

When carrying out an experiment, the factor that the researcher manipulates is known as the ________ variable; the researcher measures the ________ variable.

Research designs often include a control condition

When research is potentially upsetting for participants, the American Psychological Association guidelines require that risks must be minimized, participants must be informed of the risks, and suitable precautions must be taken to deal with strong reactions.

Since we normally cannot have access to the full population of interest, researchers are faced with taking a representative sample of the population. Which of the following is NOT true of a representative sample?

Suppose you wanted to test the hypothesis that viewing pornographic material increases aggressive behavior. The dependent variable would be

To become a more sophisticated and critical thinker one should

A professor is trying to determine whether the number of questions students ask in class is related to their class performance. She keeps track of the number of questions students ask and then compares this to performance on their next test. Technically, the number of questions would be classified as the ________ of behavior, and the test performance as the ________ of behavior.

Random assignment of participants to the experimental and control groups increases the likelihood that

Imagine that you have been hired to assist in an experiment investigating the verbal abilities of boys and girls. In preparing for the experiment, you read a research study that found higher verbal abilities in girls than boys. If this information about gender leads you somehow to communicate to the girls in the experiment that they should do better than the boys, we say that the ________ effect is operating.

Imagine a situation in which a researcher is hired by a pharmaceutical company to test a new cancer drug. The researcher finds the drug to be effective, but other scientists cannot replicate the original findings. One possible explanation for the original results that should be considered is