Deck 4: Starting Your Research

Question 1

George wants to get a brief overview of a research article before reading it in more detail. Which portion should he look at first?

A) The abstract
B) The references
C) The introduction
D) The discussion

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which of the following is true of common sense theories with regards to psychological research?

A) They have no place in psychological research.
B) They sometimes influence psychological research.
C) They are more reliable than formal theories.
D) They are often the basis of formal theories.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Which of the following is not a function of psychological theory?

A) Informs the predictions that researchers make
B) Supports the questions that researchers ask
C) Influence the methods that researchers use
D) Determines the ethical guidelines for a study

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Which of the following is false with regards to how theory influences psychological research?

A) Theory can inform the type of data analysis that the researcher conducts.
B) Theory can inform the hypotheses that researchers make.
C) Theory can inform the population of interest to researchers.
D) Theory can inform the duration it takes for the research to be approved by the Institutional Review Board.

Question 5

Which of the following best describes an instance of methodological advancement informing psychological theory?

A) The invention of the Internet has allowed surveys to be accessed by participants from all over the world.
B) The development of faster computing ability has enabled complex statistical models to be run on large datasets.
C) The foundation of the Institutional Review Board has allowed researchers to recruit a much more diverse population of participants.
D) The discovery of DNA sequencing has enabled researches to make claims about the role of nature in behavior.

Question 6

Researchers sometimes recruit participants with specific characteristics as a function of theoretical demands. For example, researchers interested in the question of the effects of nature versus nurture conduct twin studies.
Which of the following participant characteristics is least likely to be informed by psychological theory?

A) Age
B) Blood type
C) Personality
D) Gender

Question 7

Which of the following is a property of all psychological theories?

A) Assumptions
B) Causal claims
C) Box and arrow diagrams
D) Generalizability

Question 8

When looking for research articles on a particular research topic, why might you want to avoid a general "brute force" search involving just the keywords?

A) The article database will not return a comprehensive list of related articles.
B) The most widely read media article on the topic is comprehensive enough, so no further search is needed.
C) There are more efficient ways of obtaining important articles within a topic, such as using advanced search functions.
D) The "brute force" method is inefficient because important articles can always be obtained more quickly by asking your peers for them.

Question 9

A group of researchers studying the effects of exercise on stress levels hypothesize that a higher level of physical activity will result in a lower level of stress. Which of the following describes a theory-driven approach to data analysis in this instance?

A) Two-tailed hypothesis testing
B) One-tailed hypothesis testing
C) Statistical exploration
D) Data mining

Question 10

Which of the following is not an argument against data exploration?

A) Data exploration might yield unreliable correlations that lend unwarranted support to weak psychological theories.
B) Data exploration can lead to uninterpretable findings.
C) Data exploration ignores existing knowledge outside the dataset.
D) Data exploration can lead to reliable findings that would not have been discovered otherwise.

Question 11

Studies have found that "people find brain images and neuroscience language more convincing than results that make no reference to the brain (McCabe & Castel, 2008; etc" (Beck, 2010).
Raymond is a research assistant who claims that brain-imaging data is absolutely objective. Which of the following is the best response to Raymond's claim?

A) His claim is true because brain-imaging data are a direct measure of brain activity.
B) His claim is not true because brain-imaging data are bound by theories of how the data should be interpreted.
C) His claim is true because brain-imaging data capture the neural basis of behavior.
D) His claim is not true because other forms of measuring brain activity (e.g., using electrical signals) are most objective.

Question 12

What is a potential pitfall of having a strong theoretical orientation that could most likely adversely affect the quality of a researcher's work?

A) The researcher might be vulnerable to confirmation bias and look for evidence that confirms the theory while ignoring evidence that contradicts it.
B) The researcher might practice data mining by exploring datasets for relationships that might not be reliable.
C) The researcher might experience ingroup bias by having a preference for researchers who share the same theoretical orientation.
D) The researcher might not be able to distinguish language from animal sounds.

Question 13

Which of the following is an example of confirmation bias?

A) James hypothesizes that extroverts will have a bigger circle of friends on social media. He sends a personality questionnaire to all his followers on twitter measuring their level of extraversion and the number of friends they have on Facebook.
B) Sophia hypothesizes that increased exposure to sunlight results in an elevated mood. She recruits only participants who are living in a sunny climate and sends them a questionnaire that measures mood.
C) Kyle hypothesizes that daily chocolate consumption decreases stress levels. He recruits twenty participants and randomly assigns ten participants to one of two conditions: daily chocolate consumption or no chocolate consumption. After a week, he measures their stress levels.
D) Jeremy hypothesizes that listening to Mozart from infancy will result in a child developing better cognitive skills. He recruits mothers who report that listening to Mozart has beneficial effects on their infant and measures the improvement of the children's cognitive skills over time as reported by the mother.

Question 14

Which of the following is false of the introduction of an empirical research paper?

A) It provides a relatively full summary of the entire paper that includes the framework, results, and implications.
B) It provides a literature review that goes over what other areas of research and findings have been previously achieved.
C) It presents motivation for why the study is worthwhile, sometimes pointing out gaps in the literature or reasons why there might be controversy.
D) It presents the central research question, and hypotheses.

Question 15

Which of the following statements best describes the reason why certain parts of research papers are skipped by readers?

A) The abstract is often skipped because all of its information is repeated in the introduction.
B) The results section is often skipped due to its technical nature that requires a relatively strong understanding of statistics.
C) The discussion is often skipped because the results section already presented the main findings.
D) The methods section is often skipped because it is less important to know how the research was done, compared to what was found.

Question 16

What is the key purpose of the discussion section?

A) The author(s) poses new questions that the current research reveals.
B) The author(s) interpret their results and present the implications.
C) This is the section where commentaries from peer-reviewers are presented. It acts as a way to balance the interpretation of the authors and that of a third party.
D) This is the section where the author presents alternative hypothesis to balance out their results.

Question 17

Which of the following would be the best first step to getting involved in psychological research?

A) Working on your own research project as it is the most immersive.
B) Taking a variety of psychology courses.
C) Reading a narrow and specific body of literature chosen at random to gain a deep understanding. If it doesn't interest you, start over.
D) Read faculty websites at your institution.

Question 18

In general, empirical psychology research articles…

A) do not have a standard format. While most have introductions, methods, and results, there is no strict structure governing the sections even though APA formatting exists.
B) should be read linearly from beginning to end first; it is written in that order for a reason. After, you are free to skip to the important sections.
C) consists of exactly five sections: abstract, introduction, methods, results, and references.
D) are often most efficiently read without regard for the order of the sections.

Question 19

What is the key advantage of joining an on-going research project instead of starting your own?

A) One of the hardest task of conducting research as an amateur is selecting the research question.
B) You don't have enough experience in analysis and joining an on-going project will allow others to help you with that.
C) On-going research projects give you immersion faster and allow you to participate in the most important part of research: answering the question.
D) On-going projects already have a design, and designing how to conduct a study takes a lot of time and energy.

Question 20

For decades, researchers have relied on infant looking times as an indicator of the child's interest. Imagine a new body of research robustly showed that infants actually generally look quite randomly and those longer looking times indicates very little about their interest. Which of the following would most appropriately describe the stake of research that involves infants that use looking time as a measure?

A) Researchers who have previously used this method would need to reanalyze their data to see if their results still hold.
B) Researchers who have previously conducted studies using infant looking times would need to redo their experiments with a new measure to assess the validity of their claims.
C) The researchers should not worry about this new set of findings and continue working as they have. Their previous data were statistically significant and should not be invalidated by this robust finding.
D) This is a clear example of theory informing research questions. Researchers should modify how they ask questions related to infants and their interests.

Question 21

Which statement is the most accurate reflection of the scientific research process?

A) If the idea isn't new, it generally isn't worth pursuing.
B) Once you've collected your data, you should have definitive conclusions for your research questions. If not, you made a mistake.
C) Often, you find yourself asking more questions than getting answers.
D) Groundbreaking research generally comes from very complex research studies that include very intricate designs. This is why research is so cumbersome and difficult.

Question 22

Which of the following is most likely to be beyond the scope of a framework theory?

A) Allow you to formulate specific hypothesis for your experiment
B) Provide a general set of research methods that are common to the area
C) Guide data analysis
D) Help you interpret your results

Question 23

Which one of the following is least important when designing the methodology of a research study?

A) How large your sample should be.
B) How to analyze the data.
C) How certain theories supports your research hypothesis.
D) How to avoid bias in data collection.

Question 24

Which of the following is not a purpose of the literature review?

A) To convince the audience that the proposed research question is well thought-out and motivated
B) To summarize past work on a certain topic of research
C) To present the key findings of the current research
D) To present the research hypotheses

Question 25

The broader impacts and implications of a research study are presented in which section of a paper?

A) Methods
B) Discussion
C) Results
D) Introduction

Question 26

Finding an article relevant to your topic can often lead you to more relevant articles.

Question 27

All articles are equally useful in research, including media articles.

Question 28

The best way to obtain information from a research article is to read it from front to back.

Question 29

The abstract of an article provides a brief summary of the article's purpose that might not fully help you determine the relevance of the article to your interests.

Question 30

A literature review mainly lists authors who have contributed to the topic, including authors who have had both minor and major contributions.

Question 31

The introduction section of an article is where the author/s state why their study is important.

Question 32

The best way to find out the details of a survey that was used in a study is to look in the abstract.

Question 33

You should always plan to read the results section even if you do not fully understand the analyses used.

Question 34

A researcher's theoretical assumptions can influence how they design an experiment.

Question 35

Research in psychology is never concerned with common sense theories of human behavior.

Question 36

Specific theories situate the research question in a broader perspective.

Question 37

It is possible to conduct research that is free of prior assumptions.

Question 38

Psychological theory has led to experimental predictions that are counter-intuitive.

Question 39

Psychological theory influences methodology but methodology does not influence theory.

Question 40

Data exploration is a traditional and uncontroversial approach to analyzing data in psychology.

Question 41

Why is it important to first conduct a quick reading of a research article that you find, rather than read every single article you find in detail?

Question 42

Name four features in the discussion section of an article.

Question 43

List three functions of using theory in the research process.

Question 44

Describe an instance of how methodology can influence psychological theory.

Question 45

List a reason for and a criticism against data exploration.