Question 1

Which of the following is not a significant drawback of conducting a longitudinal study?

Accepted Answer

A) Participants may drop out of the study for a variety of reasons. 
B) Participants may come to no longer comprise a representative sample of a population. 
C) It can take a long time and cost a lot of money. 
D) It is highly susceptible to the cohort effect.

Question 2

Neil has gathered data regarding self-report of successful smoking cessation. He finds that one of the eight methods used by study participants accounts for a high proportion of the successes. The most useful measure of central tendency to report would be the ____.

Accepted Answer

A) distribution 
B) mode 
C) frequency 
D) mean

Question 3

Dr. Segal is testing the hypothesis that television watching in children under the age of two enhances the development of language skills. In her study, the use of random assignment ____.

Accepted Answer

A) ensures that the dependent variable reflects the personal qualities of the participants 
B) addresses situational confounding variables, such as the time of day or weather conditions 
C) ensures that the independent variable reflects the outcomes of the dependent variables 
D) tends to cancel out individual differences among participants in the experimental group and the control group

Question 4

Seth, a psychologist, would like to conduct research in the form of naturalistic observation of drug sales and use among teenagers in his city's poorest neighborhood without their knowledge. What problem does this raise?

Accepted Answer

A) The research may be unethical. 
B) People often behave differently when they know they are being observed. 
C) His sample is insufficiently representative for naturalistic observation. 
D) Study participants tend to want to appear socially appropriate.

Question 5

The halfway mark in a set of data, with half of the scores above and half below, is the ____.

Accepted Answer

A) norm 
B) mode 
C) median 
D) mean

Question 6

While people who volunteer to participate in research are probably quite different in important ways from those who don't volunteer, most psychologists have chosen to prioritize ____.

Accepted Answer

A) the generalizability of research results over research ethics 
B) validity over reliability 
C) reliability over validity 
D) research ethics over the generalizability of research results

Question 7

A quality of a measure that leads to meaningful conclusions (i.e., the measure measures the concept it was designed to measure)is called ____.

Accepted Answer

A) reliability 
B) variability 
C) statistical significance 
D) validity

Question 8

A statistical analysis of many previous experiments on a single topic is called a ____.

Accepted Answer

A) meta-analysis 
B) modal analysis 
C) deviation analysis 
D) regression analysis

Question 9

Which of the following is a drawback of longitudinal studies?

Accepted Answer

A) They are subject to cohort effects. 
B) They cannot be used to discuss causality. 
C) Participants may drop out of the study over time. 
D) They have limited generalizability.

Question 10

The most frequently occurring score in a set of data is the ____.

Accepted Answer

A) mean 
B) norm 
C) median 
D) mode

Question 11

Scientific hypotheses are best described as ________.

Accepted Answer

A) educated guesses 
B) the first step to proving a fact is true 
C) theories 
D) research methods

Question 12

The text described a survey that asked a representative sample of middle school students to respond to 17 motives for playing violent video games on a four-point scale. Surprisingly, around 20% of boys indicated that they liked to play these games in order to ____.

Accepted Answer

A) compete and win 
B) help get their anger out 
C) reduce boredom 
D) make friends and teach others

Question 13

Researchers found that "the widespread and highly publicized stereotype about female talkativeness is unfounded." This conclusion illustrates that science relies primarily on ____.

Accepted Answer

A) strongly held beliefs 
B) subjective evidence 
C) observable, repeatable evidence 
D) laboratory experiments

Question 14

A survey is a descriptive method in which the participants are asked ____.

Accepted Answer

A) open-ended questions 
B) to journal their own thoughts 
C) the same questions 
D) to converse with other survey members

Question 15

You decide to study weekend dorm life for a sociology term paper. In order to do this, you attend several fraternity parties at a large university, week after week. What method of research are you employing?

Accepted Answer

A) case study 
B) naturalistic observation 
C) survey 
D) experiential observation

Question 16

Consider the following pairs of variables. Which pair is most likely to have a weak correlation?

Accepted Answer

A) hair color and intelligence 
B) height and weight 
C) salary and educational level 
D) age and verbal ability up to age 20

Question 17

Any observation by a human being is, by definition, ____.

Accepted Answer

A) objective 
B) falsifiable 
C) inferential 
D) subjective

Question 18

The numerical average of a set of scores is the ____.

Accepted Answer

A) mean 
B) median 
C) mode 
D) norm

Question 19

A newspaper headline states, "Autism spectrum disorder correlation to wealth affirmed." Researchers found that affluent youngsters were almost twice as likely as the poorest children in the study to have autism spectrum disorder. This is a ____.

Accepted Answer

A) positive correlation 
B) reciprocal correlation 
C) negative correlation 
D) zero correlation

Question 20

Random assignment is the procedure in which each participant's chance of being assigned to any group in an experiment is ____.

Accepted Answer

A) dependent on their relevant personal qualities 
B) hypothetical 
C) equal 
D) dependent on the size of the control group

Exam 2: The Measure of Mind: Methods of Psychology