Exam 2: Reading and Evaluating Scientific Research

How does conducting a double-blind study attempt to remedy the effect of bias?

Tabitha is convinced that vaccines cause autism because her friend's child was diagnosed with autism only a week after being vaccinated.Because Tabitha's "evidence" is essentially a story about one person,it should be considered _________________ and cannot be considered reliable.

The purpose of operational definitions in science is to:

Which of the following is the correct description of frequency?

The use of deception in psychological research is:

A psychologist wanted to see if people are more prone to seek the company of others when anxious than when calm.He randomly assigned half of his subjects to an anxiety group and then told them that,as part of the study,they would receive electric shocks.He did not frighten the other group of subjects.Finally,he recorded how many subjects in each group chose to be "tested" in a group setting and how many chose to be "tested" alone.What was the independent variable in this study?

In a memory study,researchers have participants study a list of words,and then tell them it was the wrong list and that they should forget it.This deception is meant to see how effectively participants can forget something they have already studied.If the researchers plan to debrief the participants afterward,would this design meet the standards of an ethical study?

Dr.Stanhope is trying to determine which type of correlation is represented on his scatterplot,in which nearly all of his data are clustered along a diagonal line running from higher numbers on the left down to lower numbers on the right.Which type of correlation is represented by this pattern?

Imagine an experiment where the mean of the experimental group is 50 and the mean of the control group is 40.Given that the two means are obviously different,is it still possible for a researcher to say that the two groups are not significantly different?

If someone takes an intelligence test several times and receives the same score,the test has high validity.

A psychologist,studying pilot trainees,picks a select group of trainees who is hopefully representative of all other trainees.The group of trainees being studied by this psychologist is collectively known to researchers as a __________.

A graph that can be used to represent the pattern of relationship between scores from two variables is called a ____________.

In psychological studies,randomization is used to ensure that:

As children grow older,their discretionary income usually increases.The best conclusion to draw about the variables age and income are that they are:

When asked if there are more ice cream cones sold in November or July,Mary answers "July" immediately.She is surprised to find out that there is little to no difference between the two months in terms of ice cream cone sales.Mary's error is most clearly an example of ___________________.

A medical doctor believes that the presence of aromatherapy candles will reduce the anxiety of first-time mothers-to-be during labor and will increase their reported satisfaction with their care at his hospital.He randomly assigns mothers to give birth in a room either with or without aromatherapy candles.What is the independent variable in this example?

Most people would agree that anxiety can lead to sleep loss.However,Dr.Jenkins believes that sleep deprivation can also cause increased anxiety.Which research method would allow him to test a cause-effect relationship between the two?

Which of the following is NOT a descriptive research method?

The only research design that allows one to make inferences on cause-and-effect is the ________ design.

Which of the following is a measure of central tendency?