Exam 13: Putting Your Knowledge to Work: 20 Methodology Problems

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Three problems with the basketball survey include the wording of the survey,the likely sampling base of the survey,and non-response bias.To begin with the wording of the survey,there could be a subtle bias toward encouraging positive feedback.Specifically the upper endpoints of the scale were typed in CAPITAL LETTERS (and followed by an exclamation point!)whereas the lower endpoints of the scale were typed in lower case letters without an exclamation point.I'm not sure how damaging this is,but it would have been better to use exactly the same type of text and punctuation for both endpoints.On a related note,the fact that potential participants also knew that they could win a prize by entering the survey could be a small problem because it might bias the responses that people give.The survey does not guarantee anonymity,so people may not want their name attached to a survey with negative feedback.

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The main problem with this study is that the researcher's manipulation of mood may have actually been a manipulation of people's thoughts.In other words,instead of manipulating mood and mood alone,it looks like the researcher may also have manipulated people's thoughts about themselves.Specifically,when people were busy reliving past negative or positive events,it seems likely that they were experiencing negative or positive thoughts.The fact that people showed larger changes in their self-views than they did on the mood measure is pretty damaging evidence along these lines.Normally,when one variable influences another,you expect big changes in the first variable (the cause)to lead to small to moderate changes in the second variable (the consequence).

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One of the many problems with this study is that,by offering a prize that is likely to be more highly valued by men than by women,the researcher appears to have unwittingly confounded motivation or incentive with gender.If men care more than women do about Super Bowl tickets,they may work harder to win them.A second variable that is likely to be confounded with gender in this study is people's familiarity with the task chosen by the researcher.Relative to girls,boys get a great deal more practice assembling plastic models,and about 40 of these boys and girls grew up and took part in this study.A third,more subtle,problem with the researcher's claim is that he appears to have predicted an interaction in his study,but only tested for a main effect.That is,the researcher claimed that men work better than women under the pressure of competition - implying that differences between men and women are exaggerated during competition.