Deck 7: Experimental Research Designs

Question 1

How do internal validity and external validity differ?

A) Internal validity is far less important.
B) External validity is a concern regarding generalizability; internal validity is only about the study itself.
C) External validity occurs if fidelity is protected; otherwise, a study has only internal validity.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Which threat to internal validity involves the potentially confounding influence of the media?

A) History
B) Maturation
C) Selection bias

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Which design allows for the highest possible level of causal inference?

A) Posttest-only design
B) Matched-pairs groups design
C) Pretest-posttest randomized trial design
D) Within-subjects design

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which term is not a problematic issue relative to the within-subjects design?

A) Carryover effects
B) Error variance
C) Habituation
D) Sensitization

Question 5

A researcher is concerned about testing effects as a threat to internal validity. To avoid giving the test (i.e., the survey) more than once, which design should be used?

A) Posttest-only design
B) Matched-pairs groups design
C) pretest-posttest randomized controlled design
D) Within-subjects design

Question 6

To ensure that a characteristic, such as race, is distributed equally between groups, which design should be used?

A) The posttest-only design
B) The matched-pairs groups design
C) The pretest-posttest randomized controlled design
D) The within-subjects design

Question 7

Which one of the following terms is not part of a pretest-posttest randomized controlled trial?

A) Random assignment
B) Between-subjects factor
C) Within-subjects factor
D) Adaptation

Question 8

The concept of extraneous variables is why _____________ is so important.

A) randomization
B) selection
C) history
D) sensitization

Question 9

The independent variable is manipulated by the investigator, and the dependent variable is the measured outcome of interest.

Question 10

A sentence in an abstract of an article reads: "Compared to baseline scores, volunteers assigned to the intervention condition showed greater improvement at the six-month follow-up assessment than those assigned to an attention-equivalent comparison condition." Given this sentence, the study design must be a:

A) posttest-only design.
B) longitudinal design.
C) pretest-posttest randomized controlled trial.
D) repeated-measures design.