Research Methods Final

Basic

Is the following research study an example of basic or applied research?
What color paper has the greatest effect on mood?

It helps you critically evaluate information in news, academic work, and everyday life, allowing you to make informed decisions based on evidence rather than assumption or bias

Why is it important to be a good consumer of research

Base one’s conclusions of direct observations

To be an empiricist, one should:

It’s when experts in your field review your paper prior to determine if it’s ready to be published

What does it mean that an article was peer-reviewed

falsifiable, parsimonious, supported by data

A good theory is:

hypothesis

A ______ is a specific prediction that you expect to find when completing a study

Empiricis, theory-data cycle, rigorous evaluation

Research to advance our knowledge because it relies on which of the following:

False

Positive evidence can prove a theory is true: True or false?

University professor

Which job most likely relies on producer-of-research skills rather than consumer-of-research skills?

Information can be altered from the original research article to news outlets leading to misinformation or misleading reports

What is one of the downsides of the science news cycle?

Look at the back of the book to see if it includes extensive references or notes regarding the scientific studies it used

According to your textbook, what is one way to determine if a trade book (i.e., a book you might find in a bookstore) reflects current psychological research?

You should only read the sections of parts where the most relevant information is (e.g. the hypothesis)

Your textbook discusses reading an article “with purpose”. What is meant by this?

Introduction

In which of the following sections of a research article are you most lilely to find the hypothesis?

Google Scholar and PsycINFO

Which are good places to search for empirical research?

It lacks a comparison group

One reason that our experience is not the best source of knowledge is because:

Probabilistic

When a research study’s findings contradict your own experience or your beliefs about human behavior, this is acceptable because research is:

Our bias to make decisions based on the things that easily or quickly come to mind

What is the availability heuristic?

Cherry-picking

One reason why our intuition is not the best source of knowledge is because we tend to only use the evidence or experiences that support our beliefs to provide acknowledgement of our ideas. This is called:

These go through the process of peer-review

What do meta-analyses and review articles go through?

There could be something he did or that happened that could have improved his test score

Youssef concluded that his new energy drink helped him do better on his Psych exam. However, this is based on his personal experience, which could have confounds. In this context, a confound means:

levels

I am going to study to determine how psychology majors differ from others in thier support for mental health awareness. I will give a survey to determine how psychology majors differ from others in their support for mental health awareness. I will give a survey designed to assess people’s support for mental health awareness campaigns to students all over campus and compare the scores for psych majors vs non-psych majors. In this example the psych majors and non-psych majors is/are the:

Neither are manipulated variables because we cannot ethically or practically manipulate these

I am conducting a study on the effects of COVID exposure on people’s long-term health outcomes. In this study, which of the following is a manipulated variable?

A feeling of worry and anxiousness around new people

What is an appropriate conceptual definition of fear of strangers?

Learning that is done online

I want to conduct a study on the effect of online learning on kids’ emotional well-being. What is a practical and appropraite operational definition of online learning?

Causal

You read the headline: “People who exercise daily are less likely to visit the doctor’s office.” This headline is making which of the following claims?

Construct

I'm evaluating a study and questioning whether they appropriately operationalized their variables.  I am questioning the study's __________ validity.

Generalizability

When evaluating a study's external validity, you are assessing its ______________.

Type I error

When evaluating a study's external validity, you are assessing its ______________.

Elimination of internal validity

There are three conditions needed to infer causality or to establish a causal relationship.  Which of these three conditions is unique to experimental studies?

The participants were not treated well, they were harmed, and the researchers took advantage of a disadvantaged group

What were the ethical failings in the Tuskegee syphilis study?

As researchers, we must balance the knowledge gained with the potential risks to the participant

What is one of the most important lessons learned from the Milgram study in terms of ethical guidelines?

Informed consent

If you are concerned that people need to know about the study prior to participating and that they should know that their participation is voluntary, then you are concerned about _______.

Knowledge gained; risks to the participants

The principle of beneficence is concerned with the balance between _________ and ______________.

morality

Which of the following is NOT one of the APA's ethical principles?

It is a committee that reviews potential research studies for their adherence to ethical principles

Which of the following is NOT one of the APA's ethical principles?

justice

You wish to conduct a study on a sample of participants from only one ethnic group.  In order to do that, the researchers must demonstrate that the concept/problem being studied is only applicable to this one ethnic group.  This situation demonstrates the principle of:

Deception

You are conducting a study about people's willingess to trust a stranger.  In order to conduct this study, you need participants to believe that they are interacting with a true "stranger" rather than someone from the lab (i.e. a confederate).  In this study, you are relying on _________ to conduct your study.

Data falsification

A researcher is fired because she altered or changed her data to match her hypothesis.  This is an example of ____________.

APA guidelines for research with animals, animal welfare act, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee

We rely on which of the following to support ethical considerations for animals in research?

Self-report

A researcher is studying how college students' interest in music affects whether they study with or without music.  To gauge students' interest in music, she gives them a survey that asks them about the type of music they listen to, the frequency of listening, and their overall interest in the music.  Which of the following types of measurement is the researcher using to measure interest in music?

behavioral/observational

To study the effects of waste accumulation, a researcher sends a team of research assistants to walk around town and weigh the amount of trash in the trash cans throughout the city.  This is an example of which type of measurement?

physiological

If you wanted to measure the effect of stress on people's heart rate, which of the following would be the BEST type of measurement for measuring heart rate?

nomimal

You are taking a survey and are asked to identify your preference for sandwiches.  The options are: peanut butter and jelly, turkey, or veggie.  This question is an example of which scale of measurement?

Ratio

If you are measuring the weight of trash in trash cans, you are using a ___________ scale of measurement.

Validity

Dr. Valencia created a survey to measure perfectionism.  However, she is concerned whether it truly measures perfectionism or if it measures some other related concept. She is concerned about the scale’s ____________.

Test-retest reliability

To determine the consistency of the measure, Dr. Nadeem gives her survey to a group of participants and then two week's later, she gives the same group her survey again.  This is an example of ____________.

face

Perhaps our most "rough and dirty" test of validity is __________ validity in which we determine if a measure seems to match our operational definition.

convergent validity

One way to determine the validity of a measure is to compare it to other similar measures that study the same variable/construct.  This is called:

criterion validity

Imagine that you are trying to determine if your measure of depression has validity.  You are unable to compare it to existing measures of depression, but you do have the opportunity to compare it to people's requests for anti-depressants (a behavioral outcome that you assume is related to depression).  You are relying on what form of validity in this example?

Please describe some of your current political views

Which of the following questions would be a good open-ended question for asking people about their political views?

Do you like riding a bike and skateboarding?

Which of the following is a good example of a double-barreled question?

Acquiescence

You are reviewing the data from your survey and you notice that one person seemed to have put a 7 (the highest possible score) for every single item.  This is an example of:

reactivity

Sometimes when we are doing observational studies, we are worried about the effect that simply watching people can have on their behavior (i.e. they may act in different ways).  In this case, we are worried about ________________.

Using unobtrusive thoughts, allowing time for participants to adjust to your presence, evaluating the results of a certain behavior rather than the behavior itself

If it is important to use observations for your research, you can improve your data by:

All US citizens with a driver’s license

You are interested in studying how fatigue affects road rage in US drivers.  Which of the following would most likely be considered your population?

Biased sample

Which of the following terms is NOT synonymous with the others?  In other words, one of these things is not like the others...which is it?

stratified random sampling

Quota sampling, a nonrandom sampling technique, is most similar to which of the following random sampling techniques?

convenience sampling

You are trying to collect participants for a study on the effects of a new drug treatment on symptoms of PTSD.  You reach out to therapists in the area and ask them to share information about your study with potential clients.  Based on this information, what type of sampling did you use?

self-reflection

One concern we have about our samples is who chooses to participate in a study.  Particularly when we use convenience sampling, we open our study to this potential weakness.  The term for this is:

it describes the relationship or association between variables

Your textbook describes a bivariate correlation.  Which of the following are TRUE of a bivariate correlation?

Strong

You run a correlation between one's self-reported happiness and the number of times that they smile (during a 5-minute period), and get a correlation of r = .67.  Based on this information, what type of effect size did you find?

Generally the larger the effect size, the more accurate our prediction about the relationship

Which of the following statements about effect size for correlations is TRUE?

We have about a 3% chance that this finding was made in error

You run a correlation between the frequency with which people wash their hands and their likelihood of getting sick and get the following result: r = -.78, p = .03.  Based on this information, which of the following statements is TRUE?

outlier

A/an ____________ is an extreme score.

it can underestimate the true correlation

Which of the following statements is TRUE of restriction of range?

Internal validity

Chapter 8 reviews the three criteria needed to establish a causal claim.  Correlational studies FAIL to meet which of the three:

moderator

Let's imagine that you are interested in looking at the relationship in children between viewing violent TV and aggressive behavior.  You also measured parental discussion of the content of the TV and you find that the relationship between violent TV viewing and aggressive behavior differs across levels of parental discussion. When there is parental discussion, there is no relationship between the two, but when there is no parental discussion, then there is a positive correlation between violent TV viewing and aggressive behavior.  In this example, parental discussion is considered a/an ______________.

r = .88

You are reading an empirical article and the abstract says that children who develop a secure attachment with their parents are more likely to have good social relationships later in life.  Based on this statement, which of the following correlation coefficients would you most likely expect to find in the results section of their paper?

How well did they measure each variable, risk taking and liking spicy foods?

A study found that people who like spicy foods are generally more risk takers.  Which of the following questions interrogates the construct validity of this correlation?

The correlation between dating app use in Year 1 and dating app use in Year 2

Dr. Gupta is studying the relationship between time spent on dating apps and self-esteem over time.  She measures both of these variables in Year 1 and then again in Year 2.

Which of the following is an example of an autocorrelation in the results?

The correlation between dating app use in Year 1 and self-esteem in Year 2

Dr. Gupta is studying the relationship between time spent on dating apps and self-esteem over time.  She measures both of these variables in Year 1 and then again in Year 2.

multiple regression

Dr. Wang wants to test the relationship between meditation and physical health.  However, they believe that diet and positive attitude might also impact this relationship and want to control for those variables as well.  Which of the following analyses would be BEST for Dr. Wang to run to study how all of these variables relate?

There must be a covariance of the variables

Which of the following is one of the criteria needed to make a causal claim?

strength and direction of the relationship

In a regression, what beta tells us which of the following?

Multiple regression can be used to control for other variables in a study

Which of the following statements about multiple regression is TRUE?

Pattern and parsimony

A researcher wants to study how the experience of being in prison affects people’s self-esteem.  However, for ethical reasons, she cannot conduct an experiment to test this.  Therefore, she uses the available evidence to try to best determine how being in prison may lead to differences in self-esteem.  Which of the following best describes her approach to research?

simple

Parsimony means that the explanation used is:

Mediation is when there is a step falling in between the two variables of interest. Third variable is when there are different situations or groups for which the two variables of interest may be more strongly related

What is the difference between mediation and a third variable problem?

IQ can be ruled out as a third variable explanation for the association between sleep and grades

You read the following headline: "Study shows that college students who get more sleep, perform better on exams, even when their IQ level is controlled for."  What does this mean?

Independent-groups design

What's another term for a between-subjects design?

Random assignment, process of selecting people to be part of your study

What is randomization?

In a within-subjects design, half of the participants get the experimental condition first while the other half get the control condition first

Which of the following is an example of counterbalancing?

Number of people in the elevator

I am studying the effect of the number of people in an elevator on people's anxiety (as measured by how much they sweat).  I randomly assign half of my participants to be in an elevator alone while the other half are in an elevator with 10 other people.  I measure their level of sweating in each condition.  In this study, ____________ is my manipulated variable.

Systemic variability

One reason why design confounds are problematic is that they result in ______________.

Pretest/posttest design

You are a researcher studying the effects of education on art appreciation.  You want to see if taking an art history class affects people's appreciation for art, so you give participants a survey to measure their art appreciation before the class begins and again at the end of the class.  You are most likely use which of the following designs for your study?

Practice effects

You are conducting a within-subjects design and you are worried that participants might do better on your second testing of your dependent variable because they have done the measure twice now.  You are worried about _____________.

Within-subjects designs have one group that is tested multiple times whereas between-subjects designs have multiple groups that are tested once

One difference between within-subjects designs and between-subjects designs is?

A group of 5th graders who learn to read through the standard curriculum

Let's imagine that you are testing a new reading intervention for 5th grade students.  You want to see if you can improve reading skills by teaching them with a new curriculum.  For this study, which of the following would be a good control group?

Time in nature; happiness

You are conducting a study on the effect of time in nature on people's level of happiness.  In this study, _______ is your independent variable and __________ is your dependent variable.

Regression to the mean

Sometimes when we calculate a score or a mean of a group, we get an unusual or unexpected result.  If we get that measure again, oftentimes the score is closer to the mean the second time around.  This principle is called:

History

Dr. Rosen is studying the effects of social interaction on mood in the work place.  She adds a break room to a company's office stocked with coffee, tea, and other treats.  She works with the management to ensure that employees are given several breaks throughout the day so that they can enjoy the break room and interact with each other.  The study lasts one month.  During the last week of the study, the management announces that there will be many layoffs coming in the weeks ahead.  As Dr. Rosen analyzes the data, she forgets about the announcement of layouts.  Her oversight about the influence of the announcement on employees' moods is an example of:

Attrition

Dr. Khan conducted a long-term study in which people were tested on happiness, asked to make two new friends, and tested on happiness one month later.  He noticed that six of the most introverted people dropped out by the last session.  Therefore, his study might have which of the following internal validity threats?

A testing threat refers to change in the participants over time; an instrumentation threat refers to a change in the measurement device over time

How is a testing threat to internal validity different from an instrumentation threat?

Increase the size of the effect

One way to increase the power in a study is to:

Floor effect

Imagine that you collect a survey and find that everyone performs poorly on it (towards the low end). This is best described by which of the following terms?

Participants and researchers

In a double-blind study, which group of people is not aware of who is in which condition (i.e. level of the independent variable)?

When a particular subset of people systematically withdraw from one condition, but not the other

The attrition threat is particularly concerning in which of the following situations?

A manipulation check

Dr. Jeevan is conducting a student in which he is trying to teach college students about a new concept in psychology.  After providing the lesson, he does a quick survey to assess students' understanding of the new concept.  This is an example of:

Individual differences can lead to greater within-group variability and using a repeated measures or within groups design can lower the effect of individual differences

Which of the following statements about individual differences is TRUE?

A design with elements of both between- and within-subjects designs

A mixed design is: