Exam 2: Research Methods in Psychology

Statistical significance means that:

You want to determine the relationship between caffeine intake and performance on a mid-quarter exam.As students sit down to take the exam,you ask them to write the number of cups of tea,soda,or coffee they ingested two hours prior to the exam.You also obtain their exam scores.You calculate the correlation coefficient between the two variables to be +0.82.What can you conclude?

Which of the following correlation coefficients is indicative of the strongest relationship between the two variables?

Inmates in a prison are offered extra cigarettes and privileges if they allow researchers to draw blood to measure testosterone levels.Which ethical principle is being violated?

If you use deception in a research study,you must reveal the deception:

A(n)____________ is a tentative explanation of facts and relationships in sciences.

If you find no relationship between two variables,what would your correlation coefficient be?

Professor Powers needs to have a minimum of 2,500 participants for her study.Which research method would make her study most manageable?

In a double-blind experiment:

A researcher who is interested in the effect of anxiety on people's social-support seeking behaviors tells a group of participants that as part of his experiment they are going to receive "painful" electrical shocks.He tells a second group that they will receive electric shocks but that the shocks will only produce a "mild tickling" sensation.He asks participants in both groups whether they prefer to wait alone or with others while he sets up the shock machinery.In this experiment,which group is the control group?

Over several days,half the boys in a juvenile detention center are shown violent films and half are shown neutral films with no violence.During lunch and recreation,observers record every instance of physical or verbal aggression among the boys.Which method are researchers using in this study?

Of the following,which type of research is most likely to involve the frequent use of animals?

The freedom to withdraw from an experiment at any time falls under the ethical principle of:

A researcher predicted that talking to plants enhances their growth.She gave 24 plants the same amount of food,water,and sunlight.She talked to 12 of the plants daily for 6 weeks.In this experiment,what is the independent variable?

Dr.Wheelock wants to find out whether there is a causal relationship between praise and job performance.Which of the following methods should she use?

In a formal experiment,the researcher manipulates one variable to see how it affects another variable.The second variable,which is measured for effects from the manipulated variable,is called the:

An experimenter wants to study the relationship between caffeine and reaction time.She assigns participants as follows: Group One receives 50 milligrams of caffeine;Group Two receives 100 milligrams of caffeine;Group Three receives 200 milligrams of caffeine;Group Four receives no caffeine.Twenty minutes later,all participants complete the reaction-time test.In this experiment,what was the dependent variable?

Professor Vestal is interested in studying the potential relationship between adolescent marijuana smoking and academic performance.Which type of study would you suggest she use?

If you need a large sample of individuals and have limited time to complete your research,naturalistic observation is a good option.

In her correlational study,Professor Niles discovered a relationship between gang members and violence.Professor Niles can safely conclude that: