Deck 1: Research Methods

Question 1

A percentage of correct answers on some test, or the number of seconds needed to complete a particular task, can be assessed directly, and therefore are both good examples of __________.

A) dependent variables
B) independent variables
C) demand characteristics
D) confounds

Answer 1

dependent variables

Question 2

Disconfirmation of a hypothesis __________.

A) is an important part of the scientific method
B) occurs only when an experiment is poorly conducted
C) is necessarily the end point in a research program
D) leads most researchers to repeat an experiment exactly

Answer 2

is an important part of the scientific method

Question 3

A meta-analysis study __________.

A) is a powerful statistical test that combines the results of many studies
B) attempts to replicate as many prior studies as possible
C) examines alcohol use in adolescents
D) involves groups of researchers conducting similar studies

Answer 3

is a powerful statistical test that combines the results of many studies

Question 4

Matt is a well-experienced researcher investigating the effects of college drinking patterns on later life success. Because Matt is aware of the meta-analysis study conducted by Filmore and described in your book, he realizes he may be unable to avoid a fatal flaw of many alcohol studies; that is, he may be unable to __________.

A) account for age differences across subjects
B) use nonrandom assignment when placing subjects into groups
C) use random assignment of subjects into groups
D) control the kind of alcohol consumed by subjects

Question 5

What is an operational definition?

A) a definition of a behavior that translates the variable we want to assess into a specific procedure or measurement
B) a definition of an operation that translates the variable into an independent variable rather than a dependent variable
C) a claim about the origin of a behavior
D) both a and c

Question 6

A hypothesis is testable if __________.

A) it can be confirmed
B) it can be disconfirmed
C) it is sufficiently vague
D) virtually any set of circumstances could support it

Question 7

Construct validity refers to a(n) __________.

A) operational definition that is true
B) definition that truly reflects the variable named in the hypothesis
C) theory that truly describes how a behavior pattern is constructed
D) defining a behavior to make it into a variable

Question 8

In a scientific experiment, the variable that is manipulated by the experimenter to determine its effect is called the __________.

A) dependent variable
B) independent variable
C) experimental group
D) sample

Question 9

Which of the following include the two major forms of data collection for psychologists?

A) observational studies and introspection
B) introspection and experimental studies
C) observational studies and experimental studies
D) reliable and unbiased data collection

Question 10

In a scientific experiment, the variable that is measured by the experimenter to determine whether it has changed is called the __________.

A) dependent variable
B) independent variable
C) experimental group
D) sample

Question 11

Which of the following is an example of an operational definition?

A) the amount of alcohol intake by a given individual each day
B) what a psychologist believes is the reason an individual drinks alcohol
C) asking individuals to determine whether there might be major changes in their lives in the near future
D) all of the above

Question 12

Which of the following include major questions to be answered when conducting observation?

A) who to observe
B) where to observe
C) what to observe
D) all of the above

Question 13

Introspection involves __________.

A) random assignment
B) insight into how your own mind or behavior works
C) factual evaluation of individual behavior
D) none of the above

Question 14

The difference between an experimental design and a quasi-experimental design is that __________.

A) only quasi-experimental designs use random assignment
B) quasi-experimental designs are specifically designed to investigate alcohol effects; experimental designs are not
C) only experimental designs use random assignment
D) experimental design studies are specifically designed to investigate alcohol effects; quasi-experimental designs are not

Question 15

Why might a researcher investigating the health of alcohol users versus nonusers NOT use random assignment?

A) Random assignment cannot be used in humans.
B) Random assignment would have involved convincing people to drink or not drink, based on their group assignment.
C) Alcohol users cannot be randomly assigned to abstinence groups.
D) All of the above.

Question 16

Face validity is a(n) __________.

A) type of construct validity
B) measure that seems to measure the things it is supposed to measure
C) theory that truly describes how a behavior pattern is constructed
D) operationalization of a behavior

Question 17

Why is the scientific method so important for psychology?

A) It allows psychologists to test empirical claims.
B) It allows psychologists to prove things correct or incorrect.
C) It helps separate out correct from incorrect claims.
D) Both a and c.

Question 18

Emma has a tendency to recall evidence that confirms her hypothesis or viewpoint, but has a more difficult time recalling contrary evidence. Emma is demonstrating a phenomenon called __________.

A) confirmation bias
B) report bias
C) demand characteristics
D) confounds

Question 19

An empirical claim involves __________.

A) introspection
B) quasi-experimental methods
C) proof that something is true
D) claims about facts

Question 20

Jarod is in the beginning stages of developing his experiment. According to the scientific method, where should he begin?

A) with the accumulation of data
B) with a testable hypothesis
C) with the identification of a control group
D) with anecdotal evidence

Question 21

When friends tell you, with certainty, that a particular treatment helped them quit smoking, that in itself does NOT mean the treatment is effective. After all, friends are more likely to tell you about successful treatments than about unsuccessful treatments. This problem is called a(n) __________.

A) report bias
B) dependent variable
C) confound
D) independent variable

Question 22

Which of the following is not important in designing a persuasive experiment?

A) a testable hypothesis
B) systematic data collection
C) the presence of report bias
D) a well-specified dependent variable

Question 23

Which is of the following is a valid reason that scientists refuse to draw conclusions based on anecdotal evidence?

A) Anecdotal evidence is informally collected.
B) Anecdotal evidence is not derived from the scientific method.
C) Anecdotal evidence may be based on confirmation biases.
D) All of the above.

Question 24

In a scientific experiment, the variable that is measured by the experimenter to determine whether it has changed is called the __________, while the variable that is manipulated by the experimenter is called the __________.

A) dependent variable; independent variable
B) independent variable; dependent variable
C) experimental group; independent variable
D) Dependent variable; operational definition

Question 25

Let's say you are conducting research to test the idea that regular flossing reduces the incidence of gum disease. In this hypothetical design, what is the independent variable?

A) gum disease
B) flossing frequency
C) the severity of the gum disease
D) both a and b are independent variables

Question 26

A study is considered internally valid if __________.

A) the experimental and control groups are treated differently from one another, except for experimental manipulation
B) all confounds have been measured
C) the experimental and control groups are treated identically, including experimental manipulation
D) all confounds have been eliminated

Question 27

Johanna wants to study the effects of study guide use on general psychology student test scores. Which of the following represents the population, and which represents the sample for her study?

A) all possible general psychology students; current general psychology students enrolled at her university this semester
B) current general psychology students enrolled at her university this semester; all possible general psychology students
C) the current general psychology students enrolled at her university this semester; the general psychology students who actually participate in her study
D) the general psychology students who actually participate in her study; the current general psychology students enrolled at her university this semester

Question 28

A friend tells you about how she disagrees with current research regarding a particular drug treatment, because her grandmother took the drug and it worked. But, you know that when friends tell you, even with certainty, that a particular treatment helped, that in itself does NOT mean the treatment is effective. After all, friends are more likely to tell you about successful treatments than about unsuccessful treatments. This problem is called a(n) __________.

A) report bias
B) dependent variable
C) confound
D) independent variable

Question 29

You are studying how taking a high school psychology course affects performance in college psychology courses. If you were to include all students who ever will take, have taken, or are currently taking a high school psychology course, you would be testing the __________ of students who took psychology in high school.

A) sample
B) dependent variable
C) population
D) independent variable

Question 30

A strategy that deliberately seeks out unusual or extreme cases is called __________.

A) the sampling technique
B) random assignment
C) maximum variation sampling
D) independent sampling

Question 31

External validity means that a study __________.

A) is representative of the world as it is outside of the investigation
B) is measuring only changes in the independent variable
C) has numerous possible confounds
D) is measuring much more than it claims to be measuring

Question 32

John remembers the one time that he changed his mind at the last minute and decided to not board the airplane-and it crashed. However, he has also remembered that he has flown on an airplane over 200 times, and even changed his plans on many occasions. None of those times the plane crashed. Based on his experience, John believes he gets premonitions regarding plane crashes. We could call the conclusions John has made about his flying experience as based on a(n) __________.

A) confirmation bias
B) insight and introspection
C) demand characteristics
D) an operational definition

Question 33

A researcher conducts a study of the effects of drinking or not drinking coffee on calculus test scores in a group of college students. In this study, the presence or absence of coffee is the __________.

A) dependent variable
B) independent variable
C) experimental group
D) sample

Question 34

A subset of the population a researcher is interested in studying is called a(n) __________.

A) sample
B) dependent variable
C) population
D) independent variable

Question 35

Researchers typically use random assignment in an attempt to __________.

A) allow everyone who wants to participate a chance to participate in the study
B) deliberately seek out unusual or extreme cases
C) deliberately avoid unusual or extreme cases
D) provide the same likelihood of being selected to every member of the potential sample

Question 36

Which of the following is an example of a random sampling procedure?

A) accepting the first set of 20 participants who volunteered to participate in the study
B) selecting participants such that every participant has an equal chance of being picked to participate in the study
C) selecting participants using the odd/even selection criteria, so that every other volunteer is selected for the study
D) accepting individuals based on preselected criteria for participation in the study

Question 37

How does a psychologist decide what, where, or who to observe?

A) They are guided by the questions they hope to address during their observations.
B) They are guided by whether their questions are testable.
C) They are guided by whether their questions use introspection.
D) Both a and b.

Question 38

Not all hypotheses are testable. One must avoid hypotheses that are phrased in a fashion that is too open-ended. Which of the following hypotheses appears to be MOST amenable to scientific test?

A) Bad things come in threes.
B) An important figure will die in the coming year, maybe some time in the month of May or June or even maybe July, but it could be another month.
C) If one Oscar-winning actor dies, two more will die in that same month, followed by two months during which no Oscar-winning actors die.
D) Men will sometimes ask women for dates after they have consumed some number of alcoholic beverages.

Question 39

Demand characteristics are __________.

A) orders given to participants
B) cues given by the experimenter or stimulus materials
C) the relevant qualities of participants' personalities
D) expectations of a particular type of behavior in a laboratory setting

Question 40

What is the primary purpose of random assignment?

A) to ensure that experimental and control groups start out with the same number
Of participants
B) to ensure that experimental and control groups start out with different numbers
Of participants
C) to ensure that experimental and control groups start out identical to each other
D) to ensure that experimental and control groups will end up different from each other

Question 41

Which of the following can be a significant problem for correlational studies?

A) It is nearly impossible to find an effect in most studies.
B) It can be hard to tell which factor is causing the other.
C) Demand characteristics can be a significant problem.
D) Placebo effects can be a significant problem.

Question 42

Giovanni wants to investigate the effects of a new drug for attention deficit disorder in children. He has the pharmacist make envelopes of the drug and a control drug for each day of the trial. Neither the researcher nor the family knows which drug is given on a particular day. Each day the family and the teacher rate the child's behavior. At the end of the study the pharmacist reveals which days the child got the drug. This type of study is using the __________ design.

A) randomization
B) double-blind
C) placebo
D) quasi-experimental

Question 43

A mean or average is a measure of __________.

A) the central tendency of the data
B) the most frequently occurring data point value
C) the middle value within all of the data point values
D) all of the above

Question 44

A research article you are reading reports the r values of various statistical results. You quickly know that this research must be a(n) __________ investigation.

A) experimental
B) double-blind
C) correlational
D) confounded

Question 45

Inferential statistics refer to procedures for __________.

A) examining data that give measures of how confident the researchers can be in drawing conclusions based on the sample
B) examining data that only summarize the data but do not draw conclusions
C) examining data that give measures of how confident the researchers can be proving their hypothesis
D) determining whether there was confirmation bias in the study

Question 46

Which of the following is not a measure of the central tendency of the data?

A) mean
B) median
C) standard deviation
D) average

Question 47

You are conducting a correlational analysis on your data. You find a correlational coefficient of +1.73. You immediately know that __________.

A) the results must be highly significant
B) the effect was highly effective
C) there was a statistically significant difference in your group
D) you must have made an error in your calculations

Question 48

In a negative correlation, as one variable increases, the value of the other variable __________.

A) decreases
B) increases
C) stays the same
D) randomly varies

Question 49

A researcher gives the test once, lets some time pass, and then gives the same measure again. This procedure is called the __________ and attempts to measure the __________ of the measure.

A) test-retest; reliability
B) repeat testing; variability
C) inter-time interval procedure; inter-rating reliability
D) variability technique; reliability

Question 50

Which of the following is a common measure of variability of a data set?

A) mean
B) median
C) average
D) standard deviation

Question 51

If a study's participants are representative of the population as a whole and its stimuli are representative of stimuli encountered in the real world, then the study is said to have __________.

A) internal consistency
B) internal validity
C) external validity
D) external consistency

Question 52

If an experimenter inadvertently smiles and is more encouraging when research participants answer questions in a particular way, or if she asks questions in a leading manner, or if she is friendlier to members of the experimental group than she is to members of the control group, then she is unintentionally increasing the experiment's __________.

A) demand characteristics
B) placebo effect
C) double-blind design
D) internal validity

Question 53

Which of the following is NOT a way to assess the validity of a measure?

A) variability of the data
B) effect size
C) number of observations
D) size of the correlation

Question 54

In a double-blind design, __________.

A) neither the investigators nor the study's participants know who is in the control group and who is in the experimental group
B) there is no control or experimental group
C) placebo effects are increased
D) confounds are increased

Question 55

Reliability refers to an assessment of __________.

A) the degree of variability in the data set
B) how consistently the subjects performed in the experiment
C) how consistent the measure is in its results
D) the degree of change between the control group and the experimental group

Question 56

Descriptive statistics refer to procedures for __________.

A) examining data that give measures of how confident the researchers can be in drawing conclusions based on the sample
B) examining data that only summarize the data but do not draw conclusions
C) examining data that give measures of how confident the researchers can be proving their hypothesis
D) determining whether there was confirmation bias in the study

Question 57

A test uses several questions that are worded in such a way that one answer is obviously correct. Because of this, __________ may affect the results of the study.

A) demand characteristics
B) placebo effects
C) sampling bias
D) confirmation bias

Question 58

Frequency distributions __________.

A) are often displayed as a table that lists how many scores are in each of several designated categories
B) help researchers determine patterns in the data
C) provide a summary the data
D) all of the above

Question 59

The best way to avoid demand characteristics is to __________.

A) tell participants which group (experimental or control) they are in when they arrive in the lab
B) make sure that only the experimenter knows which group participants are in
C) make sure that neither the experimenter nor the participant knows which group each participant is in
D) put all participants in the control group rather than the experimental group so that they are all treated the same

Question 60

The variability of one's data set refers to the __________.

A) central tendency of the data
B) degree to which individual values differ from one to the next
C) size of the sample
D) kind of sample the researcher is using

Question 61

Which of the following is INCORRECT regarding quasi-experimental and correlation studies?

A) They may both utilize data obtained from natural situations.
B) Both use random assignment to a group.
C) Neither study can show causation.
D) Both may involve natural groups of subjects.

Question 62

Scientists refer to the situation in which there exists a possibility that another factor, different from the dependent and independent variables, may cause changes in both variables as __________.

A) a correlation
B) the third-variable problem
C) bias
D) confounding variable situation

Question 63

There seems to be a correlation between schizophrenia and poverty. It may be the case that neither causes the other. Perhaps a separate factor, such as parental income, accounts best for both schizophrenia and poverty. This illustrates a problem in assessing causality that is specific to correlational research and is called __________.

A) the third-variable problem
B) eclecticism
C) random sampling
D) response bias

Question 64

Let's say you want to assess the effect of subliminal suggestions on ratings of attractiveness. You ask 20 students to listen to subliminal tapes and then have them rate the attractiveness of 20 peers. You discover that all the peers were rated as highly attractive, with a mean of 8 out of a possible 10. Why is the above experimental design inadequate?

A) It lacks demand characteristics.
B) It lacks an independent variable.
C) It lacks a dependent variable.
D) It lacks a control group.

Question 65

Which of the following are required in an experiment?

A) an independent variable
B) a dependent variable
C) an experimental manipulation.
D) all of the above are required

Question 66

The rate of water skiing and barbequing are highly correlated. However, it is likely that the increased temperature of summertime is the causal variable. This is a good example of __________.

A) a causal relationship
B) the third-variable problem
C) bias
D) the confounding variable situation

Question 67

In which of the following cases would an observational study be preferable to a traditional experiment?

A) A researcher wants to know whether a new drug works better than a standard treatment.
B) A researcher is curious whether strawberry or chocolate ice cream tends to improve mood more.
C) A researcher wants to know whether men are more likely than women to run red lights.
D) Observational studies are preferable to experiments in all of the above cases.

Question 68

A control group should be __________.

A) as different from the experimental group as possible so that an effect can be found
B) matched with the experimental group with respect to the independent variable
C) matched with the experimental group in every way except the independent variable
D) matched with the experimental group in every way except the dependent variable

Question 69

A critical difference between quasi-experimental/correlational investigations and experiments is that only __________.

A) true experiments examine real-world questions
B) quasi-experimental/correlational investigations study real-world questions
C) experiments involve a change or manipulation
D) correlational and quasi-experimental investigations involve a change or manipulation

Question 70

In a quasi experimental study, the groups __________.

A) were randomly assigned
B) likely exist independent of the research study
C) always involve studies investigating gender effects
D) typically investigate aggression

Question 71

Which of the following is likely to be a quasi-experimental study?

A) investigating the effects of drug A in rats
B) determining whether pre-exposure to a word set improves retention
C) investigating gender differences in toy play in preschoolers
D) examining whether magnitude of reward increases response rates

Question 72

A researcher conducts a study of the effects of drinking or not drinking energy drinks on calculus test scores in a group of college students. In this study, the group that drinks energy drinks is the __________ group.

A) primary
B) secondary
C) control
D) experimental

Question 73

Marie analyzes her data and obtains a p-value of 0.001. She can conclude that __________.

A) the results meet the criteria for statistical significance
B) the probability of getting the data pattern is not likely to be due purely to accident
C) it tells us the results are not likely to be due to chance
D) all of the above

Question 74

The control group __________.

A) provides a basis for comparison, allowing the experimenter to assess the effects of the experimental manipulation
B) must be matched to the experimental group in all respects except for the experimental manipulation
C) provides a means of reducing demand characteristics
D) both a and b are correct

Question 75

Which of the following statements regarding causation is true?

A) Correlation does not imply causation.
B) Correlation always implies causation.
C) The experimental method cannot show causation.
D) Quasi-experimental methods, but not correlation, can imply causation.

Question 76

In a correlational study of level of education and level of depression, the investigators are trying to observe the relationship between these two variables. This type of study would differ from experimental studies in several important respects. For instance, __________.

A) in correlational studies, it is difficult to determine what is causing what
B) correlational studies can suffer from what is called the third-variable problem
C) random assignment is not an option in correlational studies
D) all of the above are correct

Question 77

A random sample is one in which __________.

A) every member of the population has an equal chance of being picked
B) every member of the population is picked
C) some members of the population are more likely than others to be picked
D) the population is selected randomly

Question 78

Which of the following is NOT true of a statistically significant result?

A) It must have a p-value less than 0.05.
B) The probability of getting the data pattern is not likely to be due purely to accident.
C) It tells us the results are not likely to be due to chance.
D) It proves that the experimental manipulation was correct.

Question 79

Inferential statistics __________ while descriptive statistics __________.

A) give measures of how confident the researchers can be in drawing conclusions based on the sample; summarize the data but do not draw conclusions
B) summarize the data but do not draw conclusions; give measures of how confident the researchers can be in drawing conclusions based on the sample
C) give measures of how confident the researchers can be proving their hypothesis; determine whether there was confirmation bias in the study
D) determine whether there was confirmation bias in the study; give measures of how confident the researchers can be proving their hypothesis

Question 80

Which of the following is most relevant to a study's external validity?

A) the degree to which the study's participants reflect the greater population
B) the degree to which the study is measuring what it claims to be measuring
C) the fact that the study is conducted outdoors
D) the degree to which the study's participants are different from the greater population