Experimental Psychology
Exam Answer Key
Course Introduction
Experimental Psychology is a comprehensive study of the methods and principles underlying psychological research, emphasizing the scientific investigation of behavior and mental processes. The course covers key experimental designs, data collection techniques, and statistical analysis, enabling students to critically evaluate and conduct empirical research. Topics include perception, cognition, learning, memory, and emotion, with an emphasis on formulating testable hypotheses, executing controlled experiments, and interpreting findings within ethical guidelines. By integrating theoretical knowledge with hands-on laboratory experience, students gain a deeper understanding of how psychological theories are validated and expanded through systematic experimentation.
Recommended Textbook
Research Methods in Psychology Evaluating a World of Information 2nd Edition by Beth Morling
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Chapter 1: Psychology Is a Way of Thinking
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Q1) Name three types of research data or information that people are exposed to every day,even if they are not psychologists.
Answer: Several answers are acceptable,including political polling data,websites (e.g. ,WebMD),advice columns in newspapers and magazines.
Q2) Elliott is double majoring in English and psychology.He plans on being a high school English teacher and is only majoring in psychology because he finds the classes interesting.All of the following are important reasons for him to be a good consumer of research EXCEPT:
A)He will likely be asked to read research studies in his future psychology classes
B)He will likely encounter research studies described in popular magazines he reads
C)He will likely need to read research related to enhancing his teaching
D)He will likely need to be a producer of researcher as well
Answer: D
Q3) What are the three components of a good theory?
Answer: Students should state the three components (falsifiable,supported by data,and parsimonious).
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Chapter 2: Sources of Information: Evaluating, finding, and Reading Information
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Q1) Describe three ways that scientific journals/journal articles are different from popular magazines/magazine articles.
Answer: Students must mention three of the following: journal articles are peer-reviewed,journal articles are written for psychology researchers and students,scientific journals do not tend to have advertisements in them,scientific journals are available from libraries and online databases (rather than in regular bookstores).
Q2) When reading an empirical journal article "with purpose," which two questions should you ask yourself as you read?
A)What is the argument? and What is the evidence to support the argument?
B)What were the methods? and What are the results?
C)What is the hypothesis? and What are the explanations?
D)What research exists on this topic? and What research needs to be conducted to answer the question?
Answer: A
Q3) Name the six basic sections of an empirical journal article.
Answer: The six basic sections of an empirical journal article are the abstract,the introduction,the Method,the Results,the Discussion,and the References.
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Chapter 3: Three Claims, four Validities: Interrogation Tools
for Consumers of Research
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Q1) Consider two variables: income and relationship satisfaction.Describe the three types of associations assuming these two variables.
Answer: Students must state all three associations: positive association-as income goes up,relationship satisfaction goes up;negative association-as income goes up,relationship satisfaction goes down;zero association-there is no link between income and relationship satisfaction.
Q2) To evaluate how well a study supports a frequency claim,you need to focus on evaluating which of the following validities?
A)Construct validity and external validity
B)Statistical validity and external validity
C)Internal validity and external validity
D)Internal validity and construct validity
Answer: A
Q3) Which of the following validities is NOT examined in all research claims?
A)Construct validity
B)Statistical validity
C)Internal validity
D)External validity
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Ethical Guidelines for Psychology Research
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Q1) All of the following are true of IRBs in the United States EXCEPT:
A)They can be found in settings other than colleges and universities
B)They are mandated by federal law
C)They must have a psychologist as a member
D)They must have at least five members
Q2) Which of the following is true of students' views of deception and harm in research studies?
A)Students usually are tolerant of studies that use major deception.
B)Students are not tolerant of any degree of deception.
C)Students can find deception to be stressful.
D)Students find the negative effects of deception to be worsened by debriefing.
Q3) Which of the following studies would probably NOT require an in-person IRB meeting to obtain approval?
A)An anonymous survey asking whether students want the campus mascot be changed
B)An anonymous study looking at gang behavior in recent parolees
C)A confidential study examining sleep patterns in newborns
D)A confidential survey examining sexual behavior in mentally handicapped individuals
Q4) What is plagiarism? Explain why plagiarism is an ethical violation.
Q5) What are the two issues that need to be balanced in conducting ethical research?
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Chapter 5: Identifying Good Measurement
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Q1) What is the difference between a ratio scale of measurement and an interval scale of measurement?
A)A ratio scale of measurement has a zero value that actually means "nothing" or "the absence of something," but an interval scale does not.
B)An interval scale of measurement is a type of measurement used for categorical measurements,but a ratio scale is used for quantitative measurements.
C)An interval scale has equal intervals,but a ratio scale does not.
D)A ratio scale of measurement cannot be used to compare people's scores,but interval scales can (e.g. ,Phillip is twice as fast).
Q2) What does it mean that "reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity"?
A)If a measure is reliable,it is also valid.
B)If a measure is valid,it is also reliable.
C)Reliability and validity are unrelated concepts.
D)Reliability and validity are the same concept.
Q3) For each student described above,indicate whether the operational definition of her variable is self-reported,observational,or physiological.
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Chapter 6: Surveys and Observations: Describing What
People Do
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Q1) Given the scenario above,Dr.Ewell is concerned that the children will behave differently because of the presence of research assistants.Which of the following could he do to address this concern?
A)Make the observations himself instead of using a research assistant
B)Have two undergraduate research assistants make the observations instead of just one
C)Observe the same-sex friend pairs on the first day and the opposite-sex friend pairs on the second day
D)Hide a video camera in the daycare center and record the children playing without them knowing
Q2) In his measure of "need for cognition" (the degree to which people like thinking and problem-solving),Dr.Jonason asks his participants to rate their agreement with the following statement: "People who think a lot are really lame." What is the problem with this question?
A)It is a forced-choice question.
B)It is a double-barreled question.
C)It has a double negative.
D)It is a leading question.
Q3) What is an advantage of open-ended questions? What is a disadvantage?
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Chapter 7: Sampling: Estimating the Frequency of
Behaviors and Beliefs
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Q1) Name two populations of interest that Dr.Dowling could reasonably generalize her findings to.State which of these two populations her findings would be more generalizable to and explain why that is the case.
Q2) When you are interrogating the external validity of a sample,which is the most important question to ask?
A)How many people are in the sample?
B)How was the sample collected?
C)How were the participants measured?
D)How many people are in the population?
Q3) If researchers measure every member of a population,they have:
A)Conducted a census
B)Collected a sample
C)Increased internal validity
D)Biased the study
Q4) Which of the following is true of a nonrepresentative sample in a research claim?
A)You should automatically disregard the claim.
B)You should automatically accept the claim.
C)You should ask whether it is relevant to what the researchers are measuring.
D)You should ask whether more participants are necessary.
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Chapter 8: Bivariate Correlational Research
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Q1) Dr.Oswald finds that the relationship between the number of friends one has and life satisfaction is stronger for men than for women.Why might Dr.Oswald have looked for this difference?
A)To examine her study's external validity
B)To examine her study's internal validity
C)To determine whether the association was curvilinear
D)To determine whether the association was spurious
Q2) Martin has found a correlation of r = .18 between the two variables of caffeine consumption and frontal lobe activity.This correlation is more likely to be statistically significant if:
A)The study can be applied to the real world
B)Martin used a larger number of subjects
C)Martin measured frontal lobe activity extremely accurately
D)Martin's measure of caffeine consumption is categorical
Q3) Which of the following means a study used a bivariate correlational design?
A)The presence of measured variables
B)The use of correlational statistics
C)The inclusion of quantitative variables
D)The depiction of a bar graph
Q4) Draw a scatterplot for the three associations found by Dr.Moynihan.
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Chapter 9: Multivariate Correlational Research
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Q1) For Dr.Farah to make the claim that homework causes academic achievement,which correlation does she predict will NOT be significant?
A)Correlation 1
B)Correlation 2
C)Correlation 3
D)Correlation 4
Q2) Which of the following can be concluded based on the results of Dr.Sparrow's study?
A)As the number of arguments a couple has increases,their marital satisfaction increases as well,controlling for income but not life satisfaction.
B)The relationship between life satisfaction and marital satisfaction has the weakest effect size.
C)The beta for the relationship between life satisfaction and marital satisfaction is significantly different than zero.
D)Income is a stronger predictor of martial satisfaction than either the number of arguments or life satisfaction.
Q3) Describe what makes Dr.O'Toole's study (1)a longitudinal study and (2)a multivariate correlational study.
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Chapter 10: Introduction to Simple Experiments
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Q1) Given that there are three conditions/levels of the independent variable,how many orders of the conditions are possible in Dr.Acitelli's study?
A)Three
B)Six
C)Nine
D)Twelve
Q2) Name three disadvantages of within-groups designs.
Q3) Which of the following provides information about the statistical validity of Dr.Lonsbary's study?
A)The method of random assignment
B)The d coefficient
C)The number of people in each group
D)The mood reported by the participants
Q4) Which of the following research designs is used to address possible selection effects?
A)Posttest-only designs
B)Matched-groups designs
C)Pretest/posttest designs
D)Correlational designs
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Chapter 11: More on Experiments: Confounding and Obscuring Variables
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Q1) When interrogating experiments,on which of the big validities should a person focus?
A)Internal validity
B)External validity
C)Construct validity
D)Statistical validity
Q2) Dr.LaGuardia is curious as to whether children in a daycare center will share more after watching an educational video on sharing.Immediately before and after the video,he has several undergraduate research assistants code the sharing behavior of a group of 33 four-year-olds.Which of the following would you NOT recommend to him to decrease the threat of instrumentation?
A)Establishing the reliability and validity of his coders at pretest
B)Establishing the reliability and validity of his coders at posttest
C)Using clear coding manuals
D)Using only one research assistant to code all the videos
Q3) Imagine in Dr.Paddock's study that only 90 of the original participants completed the measure of homesickness during Week 7 (10 participants had left the university and were unavailable).What kind of threat to internal validity does this pose? How does this affect her conclusion that her treatment for homesickness worked?
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Chapter 12: Experiments With More Than One Independent
Variable
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Q1) The number of main effects that need to be examined is ________ the number of independent variables.
A)More important than B)Equal to C)Unrelated to D)Independent of
Q2) To determine if there is a main effect for type of activity,Dr.Elder must examine how many marginal means?
A)2
B)3
C)4
D)5
Q3) Which of the following best describes Dr.Elder's study?
A)A 2×2 crossed factorial design
B)A 4× 2 nested factorial design
C)A 2×1 mixed factorial design
D)A 2×4 within-groups factorial design
Q4) Provide two reasons a researcher would want to conduct a factorial study.
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Q5) Explain why researchers care about interactions more than main effects.
Q6) State the three types of factorial designs.
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Chapter 13: Quasi-Experiments and Small-N Designs
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Q1) List three small-N designs and explain how these designs address maturation.
Q2) A small-N design that involves providing treatment and then removing treatment is known as a/an:
A)Interrupted time-series design
B)Stable-baseline design
C)Multiple-baseline design
D)Reversal design
Q3) A wait-list design is helpful in dealing with which of the following threats to internal validity?
A)Maturation
B)Selection
C)History
D)Attrition
Q4) The degree to which a quasiexperiment supports a causal claim depends on which of the following:
A)Its design and its results
B)Its duration and its sample size
C)Its importance and its external validity
D)Its statistical significance and its practical significance
Q5) List the three differences between small-N and large-N designs.
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Chapter 14: Replicability, generalization, and the Real World
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT true of theory-testing mode?
A)It is related to the theory-data cycle.
B)The priority is external validity.
C)The focus can be on testing association claims.
D)Most psychological studies are of the theory-testing type.
Q2) Mark decides to conduct the exact same study again to ensure that he can find the same difference between the groups a second time.This study is known as a:
A)Direct replication
B)Replication-plus-extension
C)Conceptual replication
D)Secondary replication
Q3) Name the subdiscipline of psychology that works exclusively in generalization mode and explain why it works exclusively in this mode.
Q4) Replication-plus-extensions can add any of the following EXCEPT:
A)A new participant variable
B)A new situational variable
C)A new control variable
D)A new independent variable
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