Research Methods and Statistics
Midterm Exam
Course Introduction
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to research methods and statistics commonly used in the social and behavioral sciences. Students will explore the fundamentals of scientific inquiry, including the formulation of research questions, hypothesis testing, and the design of qualitative and quantitative studies. Emphasis is placed on the ethical conduct of research, data collection techniques, and critically evaluating research findings. Additionally, the course covers statistical concepts such as descriptive statistics, probability, inferential statistics, and the use of statistical software for data analysis, enabling students to interpret and communicate research results effectively.
Recommended Textbook
Statistics for People Who Think They Hate Statistics 6th Edition by Neil J. Salkind
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Chapter 1: Statistics or Sadistics Its up to You
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Q1) ______ is one of the most popular, most powerful analytic tools available today.
A)SPSS
B)Microsoft Word
C)Mini Tab
D)Excel Answer: A
Q2) _______ statistics involve collecting, organizing, and summarizing data.
A)Experimental
B)Descriptive
C)Inferential
D)Organizational Answer: B
Q3) What is the larger group from which a sample is drawn?
A)sample group
B)population
C)median
D)mode Answer: B
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Chapter 2: Means to an End: Computing and Understanding Averages
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Q1) The more precise scales contain all the qualities of the scales below them.
A)True
B)False Answer: True
Q2) The interval level of measurement is based on some underlying continuum.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) If you were to calculate the average of individual income, and you found no outliers, which measure of central tendency should you use?
A)mode
B)median
C)mean
D)other
Answer: C
Q4) When is the nominal level of measurement the correct level of measurement to use?
Answer: When we measure a variable that has categories like female or male, we can use the nominal level of measurement.
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Chapter 3: Vive La Différence: Understanding Variability
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Sample Questions
Q1) The larger the standard deviation, the less spread out the values are.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) In the formula for calculating the standard deviation, what does the Greek letter represent?
A)summation
B)sample size
C)mean score for group
D)individual scores
Answer: A
Q3) How are the standard deviation and the variance similar? How are they different?
Answer: The standard deviation and variance are similar in that both are measures of variability and both are computed using similar formulas.They are different because the standard deviation is stated in the original units from which it is derived while the variance is stated in squared units.
Q4) It is possible for a set of data to have no variability.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Page 5
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Chapter
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Sample Questions
Q1) If you have a distribution of 20 scores, and you want 2 intervals, what should be the size of your class interval?
A)50
B)25
C)10
D)5
Q2) Describe the process of creating a class interval.
Q3) What is a histogram?
Q4) Besides histograms and polygons, describe four types of charts commonly used in behavioral and social sciences to illustrate data.
Q5) A chart that contains a continuous line that represents the frequencies of scores within a class interval is also known as a _______.
A)standard deviation
B)histogram
C)frequency polygon
D)frequency distribution
Q6) A histogram conveys the same information that a frequency polygon does.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 5: Ice Cream and Crime: Computing Correlation
Coefficients
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Sample Questions
Q1) "The more oatmeal you eat, the lower your blood cholesterol level" is an example of a
A)continuous correlation
B)biserial correlation
C)positive correlation
D)negative correlation
Q2) What type of correlation exists if the less money you put in the bank, the less interest you will earn?
A)positive correlation
B)negative correlation
C)indirect correlation
D)none of the above
Q3) What is the purpose of a scatterplot?
Q4) A positive correlation between two variables would be represented in a scatterplot as ______.
A)a line sloping upward
B)a line sloping downward
C)a horizontal line
D)a vertical line
Q5) Under what circumstances would you use the phi coefficient?
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Chapter 6: Just the Truth: An Introduction to Understanding
Reliability and Validity
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Q1) What type of validity is concerned with the adequate representation of test items?
A)content validity
B)predictive validity
C)concurrent validity
D)construct validity
Q2) If your test is not reliable, you must try to lower your error.
A)True
B)False
Q3) _______ is the score that you would receive if the test contained no error.
A)Observed score
B)Actual score
C)True score
D)Error score
Q4) _______ is based on the judgment of how well a test reflects an underlying idea.
A)Construct validity
B)Criterion validity
C)Internal consistency validity
D)Content validity
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Q5) Name four types of reliability and what they measure.
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Chapter 7: Hypotheticals and You: Testing Your Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) A smaller difference between the sample statistic and the population parameter means that you will have _______ sampling error.
A)higher
B)lower
C)no
D)infinite
Q2) What are the two main categories of hypotheses?
A)null and research
B)null and sample
C)research and population
D)research and sample
Q3) If you were to hypothesize that there is no relationship between reaction time and problem-solving abilities, you would have a ______.
A)directional research hypothesis
B)nondirectional research hypothesis
C)null hypothesis
D)hypothesis type that cannot be determined
Q4) According to the book, what are five characteristics of a well-written hypothesis?
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Chapter 8: Are Your Curves Normal Probability and Why It
Counts
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Sample Questions
Q1) Events that occur in the extremes of the normal curve have a very small probability of occurring.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Under the normal curve, approximately what percentage of scores falls between 1 and 2 standard deviations below the mean?
A)14%
B)34%
C)68%
D)95%
Q3) Under the normal curve, approximately what percentage of scores falls between 1 and +1 standard deviations around the mean?
A)14%
B)34%
C)68%
D)95%
Q4) What are three characteristics of a normal curve?
Q5) Define asymptotic.
Q6) What does a z score of 4 mean?
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Chapter 9: Significantly Significant: What It Means for You and Me
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Sample Questions
Q1) If the obtained value is greater than the critical value, what should you do?
A)reject the null hypothesis
B)accept the null hypothesis
C)set a high p value
D)increase your sample
Q2) Why does the researcher never really know the true nature of the null hypothesis?
Q3) It is possible to have a statistically significant result that is not meaningful.
A)True
B)False
Q4) How would a researcher determine when statistical significance is important?
Q5) What Greek letter is associated with Type II error?
A)?
B)? C)?
D) \[\Psi\]
Q6) Why do we use inferential statistics?
Q7) Why can you not be 100% sure that the difference between two groups is not due to chance?
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Chapter 10: Only the Lonely: The One Sample Z-Test
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Sample Questions
Q1) In the formula for calculating a z score, what does stand for?
A)the obtained value
B)the critical value
C)the population average
D)the sample average
Q2) The standard error of the mean is calculated as ______.
A)the population standard deviation divided by the square root of the size of the sample
B)the population standard deviation divided by the size of the sample
C)the square root of the size of the sample divided by the population standard deviation
D)the sample standard deviation divided by the size of the sample
Q3) In t-test, if the resultant t value is -2.72 and p<.05, what is the interpretation?
A)There is a statistical significance in the test.
B)There is no statistical significance in the test.
C)unknown
D)not sure
Q4) What are the guidelines in using effect size?
Q5) What is effect size?
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Chapter 11: Tea for Two: Tests Between the Means of Different Groups
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Sample Questions
Q1) The t-test for independent means is used when each group is tested _______.
A)only once
B)only twice
C)once or twice
D)any number of times
Q2) In the formula that computes a t value, what does n represent?
A)scores for Group 1
B)means for Group 1
C)number of participants for Group 1
D)variance for Group 1
Q3) Effect size is the magnitude of the differences between groups.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What does the symbol p represent in the following: t = 5.15, p < .01?
A)test statistic
B)t value
C)degrees of freedom
D)probability
Q5) What does t = .23 mean?
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Q6) Under what circumstances would a researcher reject the null hypothesis?
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Chapter 12: Tea for Two Again: Tests Between the Means of Related Groups
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Sample Questions
Q1) Under what circumstances would you use a t-test for dependent samples?
Q2) In a t-test for dependent means, the null hypothesis could look like this: A)
B) C) D)
Q3) Based on the formula for the t-test for dependent means, what does the n represent?
A)sum of the means
B)number of participants
C)number of pairs of observations
D)sum of all scores
Q4) If your degrees of freedom is 98, your sample size when conducting a t-test for dependent means must be _______.
A)97
B)99
C)98
D)100
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Q5) Interpret, in words, what it means for a research question that a null hypothesis was rejected.
Chapter 13: Two Groups Too Many Try Analysis of Variance
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is the same as t² when examining the difference between two groups?
A)F
B)T
C)Cohen's d
D)F²
Q2) In ANOVA, the variance due to differences in performance is separated into variance that is due to differences between individuals _______ groups and variance due to differences _______ groups.
A)within; between B)above; between C)above; within D)over; between
Q3) When interpreting F , = 10.80, p < .01, how many groups were examined?
A)60
B)57
C)3
D)2
Q4) What is the sum of squares total?
Q5) How would you interpret the equation: H : µ = µ = µ ?
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Chapter 14: Two Too Many Factors: Factorial Analysis of
Variancea Brief Introduction
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Q1) In a factorial ANOVA, the research hypothesis for the interaction might look like this:
A)H : µ pp × n w = µ pp × t n ng = µm ddl × n w = µm ddl × t n ng
B)H : µ pp × n w µ pp × t n ng µm ddl × n w µm ddl × t n ng
C)H : pp × n w = pp × t n ng = m ddl × n w = m ddl × t n ng
D)H : pp × n w pp × t n ng m ddl × n w m ddl × t n ng
Q2) What are the three research hypotheses used in a 2 × 2 factorial analysis?
Q3) Why do we use SPSS to calculate a factorial ANOVA?
Q4) If you wanted to examine whether television viewing through social learning differs based on students' grade in school (i.e., first, second, third, etc.), what is the independent variable of interest?
A)grade level
B)television viewing
C)students
D)school
Q5) In a factorial ANOVA, one of the null hypotheses might look like this: A) B) C) D)
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Chapter 15: Cousins or Just Good Friends Testing
Relationships Using Correlation Coefficient
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Sample Questions
Q1) If two variables are significantly correlated, this means that one variable causes the other.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Statistically significant correlations cannot show _______.
A)the probability level
B)the size of the effect
C)causality
D)the strength of the effect
Q3) You would like to examine the association between temperature and frozen yogurt sales.You hypothesize that higher temperatures will be associated with increased frozen yogurt sales.You have a _______.
A)one-tailed hypothesis
B)two-tailed hypothesis
C)nondirectional hypothesis
D)invalid hypothesis
Q4) The correlation coefficient can only be used for one-tailed tests.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What are the eight steps involved when examining a research question?
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Chapter 16: Predicting Wholl Win the Super Bowl: Using
Linear Regression
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Q1) In a scatter plot, if all data points were aligned along a 45° angle, your correlation would be _______.
A)of medium strength
B)of weak strength
C)perfect
D)0
Q2) Based on the formula for a regression line, what does b represent?
A)known value of X
B)slope of a line
C)y-intercept
D)predictor score
Q3) The regression line reflects the best estimate of predicted scores for the independent variable based on levels of the dependent variable.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Why do we use and not Y in the regression equation?
Q5) What is linear regression?
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Q6) If the correlation between variable X and variable Y is perfect, what do you know about the prediction?
Chapter 17: What to Do When Youre Not Normal:
CHI-Square and Some Other Nonparametric Tests
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Sample Questions
Q1) How do you interpret = 18.9, p < .05?
Q2) A chi-square is calculated by dividing the total number of _______ by the number of _______.
A)occurrences; observations
B)observations; occurrences
C)occurrences; categories
D)categories; occurrences
Q3) When conducting a chi-square test, the categories of your variable(s) must be
A)mutually exclusive
B)dependent
C)less than five in total
D)more than three in total
Q4) Write a sample research question where the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test would be the most appropriate statistical technique to use.
Q5) In the result , what is .05?
A)the value of the observed value
B)the value of the critical value
C)the significance level
D)the degrees of freedom
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Chapter 18: Some Other Important Statistical Procedures
You Should Know About
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Q1) There are many studies that have been published on gender differences.______ could help clarify the meaning of all those studies' outcomes.
A)path analysis
B)meta-analysis
C)factor analysis
D)regression analysis
Q2) Structural equation modeling is a relatively new technique that has become increasingly popular since it was introduced in the early ______.
A)1960s
B)1970s
C)1980s
D)1990s
Q3) Repeated-measures analysis of variance is used when there is one factor on which participants are tested more than once.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Give an example of a research situation where repeated-measures ANOVA would be the most appropriate statistical technique.
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Chapter 19: Data Mining: An Introduction to Getting the
Most Out of Your Big Data
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which tool is an effective one in counting with frequencies?
A)correlation
B)compare means
C)cross-tabulation
D)regression
Q2) As a general rule in creating pivot tables, we need be as granular as possible.The meaning of granular refers to _________.
A)comprehensive
B)detailed
C)clear
D)interactive
Q3) Data mining is another term for ____________.
A)analytics
B)surveying
C)investigation
D)information
Q4) As a general rule, we need be as granular as possible in generating pivot tables.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 20: A Statistical Software Sampler
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Q1) Minitab contains utilities that include ReportPad, which is a report generator.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following statistical software packages is free?
A)PSPP
B)Minitab
C)SPSS
D)JMP
Q3) PSPP is an open-source variant of SPSS.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Which of the following is free and works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix platforms but takes a while to get used to because the learning curve tends to be a bit steep?
A)R
B)Minitab
C)StatCrunch
D)SPSS
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Chapter 21: The Ten or More Best and Most Fun Internet
Sites for Statistics Stuff
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Q1) The following course is an online component of a basic statistics course taught at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and contains a complete and interactive statistics text:
A)SurfStat Australia
B)StatMatch Australia
C)Statistics 101
D)Data Analysis 101
Q2) What is KhanAcademy?
A)a non-profit educational organization
B)the data and story library
C)SurfStat Australia
D)statistical reference datasets
Q3) Which university's research guide's site has hundreds of resource links?
A)University of Florida
B)University of Newcastle, Australia
C)University of Michigan
D)Wikipedia
Q4) The URL of a website will work consistently from day to day.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 22: The Ten Commandments of Data Collection
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Sample Questions
Q1) When you think about a research question, it is also important to think about the type of data you will have to collect to answer that question.
A)True
B)False
Q2) You should personally train people to collect or transfer your data if you want to be confident that they understand the data collection process as well as you do.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Practicing with _______ data can help you make sure that it is easy to go from your original scoring sheets to the data collection form.
A)high-scoring B)any
C)pilot D)lost
Q4) Always make a duplicate copy of the data file. A)True B)False
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