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Match Each Threat to the Validity of a Research Design

Question 6

Matching

Match each threat to the validity of a research design with the appropriate example

Premises:

Responses:

Statistical regression

Prior to experiencing a treatment, subjects in a study take a pretest. This sensitizes them to the topic of the study. They may react differently to the treatment than would subjects who did not take the pretest first.

Maturation

A researcher selects subjects based on their extreme scores on a personality test. When the subjects are tested again later, their scores are less extreme.

Instrumentation

The researcher applies two different treatments to the experimental group in a research study.

Reactivity

A researcher conducts an experiment in a prison to determine the effect of a new treatment program. During the experiment, a large number of the inmates in the control group are released on parole, although no inmates in the experimental group are paroled during the course of the study.

History

During the process of a study, subjects become tired, affecting their responses

Differential selection

Instead of randomly selecting students to participate in a study on campus, the researcher asks students to volunteer. As a result, only students who are interested in the study participate.

Multiple-treatment interference

While interviewing subjects during an experiment, the researcher does not treat the subjects in the experimental and control group identically.

Experimenter bias

A specific event takes place between the first and second observations in a study that may affect measurement.

Pretest effects

A researcher brings subjects into a lab to conduct a study. The subjects are aware that they are being studied and may not behave normally.

Experimental mortality

A researcher conducts an experiment in an elementary school to determine the effectiveness of an anti-drug education program. As there are an equal number of boys and girls in the school, the researcher finds it easier to assign all the boys to the experimental group and all the girls to the treatment group

Self-selection

During a large-scale study in which crime victims are interviewed, two interviewers resign and must be replaced.