129 test (complete)

What are the three main goals of science?

To describe, predict, and control events or behavior.

What is description?

Accurately observing and describing what happens.

What is prediction?

Identifying when a behavior or event is likely to happen.

What is control?

Showing that changing one variable reliably changes another variable.

What is determinism?

The assumption that events and behaviors have lawful causes rather than occurring randomly.

What is empiricism?

Using direct observation and measurable evidence instead of opinions or intuition.

What is experimentation?

Manipulating an independent variable and measuring its effect on a dependent variable to investigate cause and effect.

What is replication?

Repeating a study or finding to determine whether the results are reliable.

What is parsimony?

Considering the simplest reasonable explanation before accepting a more complicated one.

What is philosophic doubt?

Remaining willing to question and revise conclusions when new evidence becomes available.

What is utilization review?

The process healthcare organizations, such as HMOs and PPOs, use to monitor treatment plans.

What does utilization review examine?

Client goals, the expected time frame for meeting them, client progress, whether treatment should continue, treatment costs, and differences in treatment practices.

What are outcome measures?

Systematic methods used to determine whether treatment is successful.

How are outcome measures used?

A client’s current behavior or progress is compared with behavior at the beginning of treatment or during the first assessment.

Why are outcome measures important?

They make improvement visible, help practitioners make treatment decisions, show whether treatment should continue, change, or stop, hold practitioners accountable, and provide evidence that services are effective.

What did the 1998 APA survey find about outcome measures?

Only 29% of clinicians used some type of outcome measure; of those clinicians, 40% used a standardized method and 60% used a nonstandardized method.

What is evidence-based practice (EBP)?

Using the best available scientific evidence as a basis for selecting and providing treatment.

Why is evidence-based practice important?

Treatments should be selected based on evidence that they work rather than popularity, tradition, or a clinician’s personal opinion.

What are the benefits of EBP?

It increases the likelihood of effective treatment, encourages practitioners to stay current with research, promotes consistency and accountability, helps justify treatment decisions, and encourages effective treatment protocols.

What are potential drawbacks of EBP?

Guidelines may rely too heavily on large-group research, overlook individual differences, fail to consider culture or preferences, and use strict protocols that do not fit every client.

Why can randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies be difficult in psychological treatment?

Therapists and clients usually know what treatment is being provided, making double-blind procedures and believable psychological placebos difficult or impossible.

What are the three components of the EBP “three-legged stool”?

Best scientific evidence; clinical experience and expertise; and patient characteristics and preferences.

What is best scientific evidence in EBP?

Findings from carefully designed experiments and quantitative research.

What is clinical experience and expertise in EBP?

The practitioner’s education, training, professional judgment, and ability to deliver or adapt treatment.

What are patient characteristics and preferences in EBP?

The client’s values, goals, culture, circumstances, individual characteristics, and treatment preferences.

Why is EBP compared to a three-legged stool?

EBP becomes unstable if any one of its three components is ignored.

How can a practitioner use clinical expertise while following EBP?

The practitioner can adjust the pace or delivery of treatment without removing the effective parts of the treatment.

How can treatment be adapted to patient characteristics and preferences?

A therapist can consider the client’s preferred treatment format and cultural background when delivering the treatment.

What is the traditional “gold standard” for research?

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled group design.

Why can the traditional gold standard be difficult in psychological practice?

Therapists know the treatment, clients may know the treatment, psychological placebos may be impossible to create, clients vary considerably, group averages may hide individual change, and controlled findings may not apply perfectly to real-world practice.

How do single-case designs help meet EBP guidelines?

They can be used in clinical settings, repeatedly measure an individual’s behavior, allow the person to serve as their own control, and show whether behavior changes when treatment is introduced or changed.

What is the scientist-practitioner model?

An approach in which practitioners use scientific research, methods, measurement, and procedures in their everyday work.

How does the scientist-practitioner model guide treatment?

Practitioners systematically measure client progress and use evidence to guide treatment decisions.

What is the clinical wisdom view?

Relying mainly on unsystematic observations, common sense, personal experience, clinical training, and advice from experienced professionals.

Why does clinical experience not reliably prove that treatment caused improvement?

Clinicians may remember successes more than failures, be influenced by bias, mistake coincidence for cause and effect, or overlook other reasons for improvement.

What is statistical significance?

The indication that an observed result would be unlikely under the null hypothesis.

What probability value is commonly used for statistical significance?

p < .05.

What does statistical significance not necessarily show?

It does not necessarily show that an effect is large, useful, or clinically meaningful.

What is clinical significance?

Whether treatment produces a noticeable, meaningful, real-world improvement in a client’s functioning.

How can clinical significance be measured?

Through outcome measures, goal attainment, the size of improvement, whether the client returns to a functional range, and social-validity ratings.

What is the difference between statistical and clinical significance?

A small effect may be statistically significant in a large sample but still not be clinically important.

What is external validity?

The extent to which study findings can be applied to other participants, settings, conditions, behaviors, situations, or periods of time.

What question does external validity ask?

Whether a treatment will work outside the exact circumstances of the original study.

How do large-group designs attempt to establish external validity?

They collect data from many participants, combine the data, compare group averages, and use the sample to make conclusions about a larger population.

Why do large samples not guarantee external validity?

The participants or research setting may not represent the real-world population, and group averages may hide individual differences.

How do single-case designs establish external validity?

Through replication across different participants, settings, behaviors, dependent variables, researchers, times, and repeated occasions with the same participant.

Why does replication increase confidence in generalization?

If a treatment repeatedly produces similar results, researchers become more confident that the effect can generalize.

What are the three main characteristics of group designs?

They recruit many participants, compare the means or averages of two or more groups, and draw conclusions at the group level rather than the individual level.

What is random assignment?

Placing participants into different conditions by chance.

Why is random assignment used?

To distribute other variables that could affect the dependent variable relatively equally across groups.

How does random assignment strengthen a study?

If groups differ after treatment, the independent variable becomes a more believable explanation.

What is the independent variable (IV)?

The factor researchers intentionally manipulate or control.

How can a clinical treatment serve as an independent variable?

Researchers can give one group a treatment while another group does not receive it yet.

What is a placebo control group?

A group receiving an intervention researchers believe is inactive or ineffective.

What does a placebo control group control for?

Expectations, attention, and contact with treatment providers.

What is a wait-list control group?

A group that does not initially receive treatment but is offered treatment after the pretest and post-test period.

What is a mean?

The average score for a group.

Why do researchers compare means?

Means represent an entire sample with one number and allow comparison between groups.

What is null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST)?

Using probability theory to determine whether an observed group difference would be unlikely if no real difference existed.

What is a normal distribution?

A symmetrical, bell-shaped pattern in which most scores are near the mean and scores become less common farther from the mean.

Where are the mean, median, and mode located in a perfectly normal distribution?

At the center of the distribution.

Why is the normal curve important?

Many statistical tests use normal-distribution and probability principles to determine how unusual a score or group difference is.

What does a larger difference between group means generally suggest?

It is less likely that the difference is explained entirely by chance or error.

What is the null hypothesis?

The claim that there is no genuine difference, relationship, or treatment effect in the population.

What does the null hypothesis assume about sample differences?

They occurred because of chance, error, or ordinary variation.

How do researchers evaluate the null hypothesis?

They use statistical tests to determine whether there is enough evidence to reject it.

When is a result commonly considered statistically significant?

When the probability of obtaining the result under the null hypothesis is below the selected cutoff, commonly p < .05.

What is one problem with the null hypothesis in group designs?

Two groups are almost never completely identical, yet the null hypothesis claims there is absolutely no difference.

Why can large samples make a small difference statistically significant?

Increasing sample size increases the likelihood of rejecting the null hypothesis, even when the difference is unimportant.

What can statistical significance fail to show?

The size of an effect, whether it is useful, and whether it is clinically meaningful.

What is the problem with aggregated data?

Group means do not necessarily represent individual behavior and can hide important variation.

How can individuals differ from a group average?

Some participants may improve, some may remain unchanged, and others may worsen even when the average suggests treatment worked.

Why is measuring the dependent variable only once or twice a problem?

It may fail to show trends, cycles, instability, or exactly when behavior changed.

Why do behavior researchers need repeated measurements?

Behavior is continuous, time-dependent, repeated, and always changing.

What are the fundamental assumptions of single-case designs?

Behavior is an individual phenomenon, measurement must be sensitive to behavioral continuity, participants serve as their own controls, and generality is established through replication.

Why is behavior considered an individual phenomenon?

Behavior occurs within an individual organism, so the individual should be an important unit of analysis.

Why must measurement be sensitive to behavioral continuity?

Behavior occurs repeatedly and can be observed multiple times, so repeated measurements are needed to identify patterns and changes.

How do participants serve as their own controls?

Their behavior during one phase or condition is compared with their behavior during another phase or condition.

Why are participants serving as their own controls useful?

It reduces the need to compare the person with a separate control group.

How is generality established in single-case research?

Researchers replicate effects across participants, settings, behaviors, conditions, and periods of time.

How do group and single-case designs differ?

Group designs use many participants with few observations; single-case designs use fewer participants with many observations.

What is protocol analysis?

A data-collection method in which participants verbally or in writing describe their strategies and thought processes while completing a problem-solving task.

Why are single-case designs appropriate for protocol analysis?

They allow researchers to collect many detailed observations from one participant and study how strategies change across time or conditions.

What is a case study?

A detailed, usually nonexperimental description of one patient or a small number of unusual cases.

What are characteristics of case studies?

They collect detailed information before and during treatment, are often used for unusual or novel cases, and usually do not systematically manipulate an independent variable.

What can case studies do?

They can generate hypotheses or suggest treatments that should be tested.

Why can case studies not usually establish cause and effect?

They generally do not provide enough experimental control.

What is a single-case design?

An experimental research method that repeatedly measures behavior and systematically manipulates an independent variable.

What can single-case designs demonstrate?

They can demonstrate that treatment caused behavior change and use replication to establish generality.