Research Methods in Psychology Question
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Course Introduction
Research Methods in Psychology offers an in-depth introduction to the scientific techniques and procedures used to investigate human behavior and mental processes. The course covers the basics of experimental and non-experimental research designs, hypothesis formulation, variable measurement, data collection methods, and ethical considerations in psychological research. Students will gain practical skills in designing studies, analyzing data using statistical methods, and interpreting results. Emphasis is placed on critical evaluation of published research and the application of appropriate methodologies to answer psychological questions. This foundational knowledge prepares students to conduct independent research and recognize the strengths and limitations of various psychological studies.
Recommended Textbook
Research Methods in Psychology Evaluating a World of Information 3rd Edition by Beth
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Morling
Chapter 1: Psychology Is a Way of Thinking
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Q1) The Harlow study described in the text is an example of basic research. It found that attachment to a caregiver is important in the early months of life. How might a researcher use this study as inspiration for an applied research study?
Answer: Answers may vary,but in each response,students should provide an example applying the concept of attachment in early life to an applied domain.For example,a student could include studying foster children who may not be with their caregivers in early life and their later attachment.Another example could involve examining different techniques used in hospitals to teach parents-to-be how to form close attachments with their children.
Q2) Dr. Gonzalez is a peer reviewer for a manuscript submitted to a journal. He is likely to provide comments on which of the following?
A)How well the general public will understand the study
B)How well the research was conducted
C)The prestige/reputation of the author
D)Previous studies from the same research group
Answer: B
Q3) What are the three components of a good theory?
Answer: A good theory is falsifiable,supported by data,and parsimonious.
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Chapter 2: Sources of Information: Why Research Is Best
and How to Find It
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Q1) Matthew is reading an empirical journal article and wants to know whether the authors used the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) or the NEO-PI to measure extraversion. In which section would he find this information?
A)Introduction
B)Method
C)Results
D)Discussion
Answer: B
Q2) Hannah just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project. What information might she get out of reading the references section of her article?
A)A list of the measures used in the study
B)The name of an article that researched a similar topic
C)An idea for a future study
D)An explanation of the statistical tests used
Answer: B
Q3) Name four examples of biases of intuition.
Answer: Examples of biases of intuition include: being swayed by a good story,the confirmation bias,the present/present bias,the availability heuristic,and the blind spot bias.
Page 4
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Chapter 3: Three Claims, Four Validities: Interrogation Tools
for Consumers of Research
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Q1) Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B.
If Dr. Kang decided against using random assignment, which of the following would be threatened?
A)the covariance of the study
B)the temporal precedence of the study
C)the internal validity of the study
D)the external validity of the study
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Ethical Guidelines for Psychology Research
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Q1) The need to balance the potential costs and benefits to participants taking part in a research study is done to address which principle of the Belmont Report?
A)The principle of respect for persons
B)The principle of justice
C)The principle of beneficence
D)The principle of integrity
Q2) Under what conditions is debriefing necessary? What should be included in a debriefing?
Q3) Ethical decision making done by researchers can change in response to all of the following EXCEPT:
A)bad experiences of other researchers.
B)the possibility of additional grant funding.
C)changing social norms.
D)scientific discoveries.
Q4) Why is plagiarism a violation of ethics?
A)It violates an APA standard.
B)It violates a Belmont principle.
C)It is akin to lying.
D)It makes psychology researchers look bad.
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Chapter 5: Identifying Good Measurement
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Q1) Name the three types of internal reliability and the four types of validity.
Q2) Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete.
Dr) Sheffield has now decided that he wants to test his measure on some university students (who some estimates say have a 6% prevalence rate of compulsive gambling). He has a group of 100 university students complete his measure. He also has them complete two other measures (one that measures addictive behavior in general and one that measures general attitudes toward gambling). He finds that his new measure is positively associated with each of these other measures. This procedure has provided evidence for the of Dr. Sheffield's measure.
A)content validity
B)predictive validity
C)convergent validity
D)discriminant validity
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Chapter 6: Surveys and Observations: Describing What
People Do
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Q1) Dr. Paul is concerned about a fence-sitting response set when he conducts his survey. Which of the following might you recommend to decrease fence sitting?
A)Using reverse-worded questions
B)Using scales with an even number of response options
C)Providing a "no opinion" option
D)Using a Likert scale
Q2) Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Imagine that Dr. Ewell calculates a correlation (e.g., ICC) for his two raters. Which of the following would be the best value for Dr. Ewell to find?
A) 0.92
B)0.02
C)0.89
D)1.15
Q3) What is an advantage of open-ended questions? What is a disadvantage?
Q4) Explain why socially desirable responding happens. Name one way to decrease the likelihood of its occurrence.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Sampling: Estimating the Frequency of
Behaviors and Beliefs
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Q1) Which of the following is true regarding interrogating frequency claims?
A)Their accuracy can usually be determined.
B)The chief concern is to evaluate the sampling technique.
C)The most important thing to consider is the size of the sample.
D)Frequency claims cannot be interrogated.
Q2) Which of the following statements is true of random assignment and random sampling?
A)Random assignment is necessary for internal validity, whereas random sampling is necessary for external validity.
B)They both are necessary for frequency claims.
C)They both mean the same thing.
D)Random sampling is more important than random assignment.
Q3) If researchers measure every tenth member of a population, they have:
A)conducted a census.
B)collected a sample.
C)increased internal validity.
D)biased the study.
Q4) What is the difference between random sampling and random assignment?
Page 9
Q5) Explain the two reasons nonrandom samples are sometimes acceptable.
Q6) Explain why bigger samples are not always better samples.
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Chapter 8: Bivariate Correlational Research
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Q1) When examining an association in which one variable is categorical and one is quantitative, which of the following is NOT likely to be used?
A)A t test
B)A correlation
C)A scatterplot
D)A bar graph
Q2) When evaluating the external validity of an association claim, which of the following is the most important issue to consider?
A)The way the sample was selected from the population
B)The size of the sample
C)The number of subgroups
D)The size of the original population
Q3) If a person is asking whether the variables in an association claim are measured appropriately, is being interrogated.
A)construct validity
B)external validity
C)internal validity
D)statistical validity
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Chapter 9: Multivariate Correlational Research
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Q1) Dr. Cheong is a clinical psychologist who is curious about how people deal with natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes). His previous research suggests that there is a relationship between how much people feel their emotional well-being was affected by the natural disaster and their likelihood of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. However, he is curious as to whether the effect of emotional well-being occurs because people receive different levels of social support. He conducts a study in which he asks 174 men and women affected by Hurricane Sandy (2012) to report on how their well-being was affected by the hurricane, the social support felt after the storm, and the number of PTSD symptoms. Dr. Cheong finds support for his proposed relationship. However, in examining his data more closely, he finds that the relationship between emotional well-being and PTSD symptoms is stronger for men than for women.
Dr) Cheong's finding that the relationship between emotional well-being and PTSD symptoms is stronger for men than for women suggests which of the following?
A)Participant sex is a moderating variable.
B)Participant sex is a mediating variable.
C)Emotional well-being is a moderating variable.
D)Emotional well-being is a mediating variable.
Q2) How do multiple regression designs help rule out third variables?
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Chapter 10: Introduction to Simple Experiments
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Q1) Which of the following phrases describes a manipulated variable?
A)"Participants wrote down how many text messages they had sent the day before."
B)"Researchers recorded whether participants volunteered to help the student in need or did not volunteer."
C)"Participants were placed in the high tempo music condition, the low tempo music condition, or the no music condition based on which color card they randomly drew from a deck."
D)"Researchers recorded the length of time participants took to complete the anagrams."
Q2) Researchers conducting an experiment can ensure temporal precedence by doing which of the following?
A)Having a control group
B)Manipulating the cause before measuring the effect
C)Running a manipulation check
D)Establishing covariance
Q3) Explain why control variables are necessary in experiments and why they are not actually variables.
Q4) Name three advantages of within-groups designs.
Q5) Name three disadvantages of within-groups designs.
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Chapter 11: More on Experiments: Confounding and Obscuring Variables
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Q1) To avoid insensitive measures, it is important to use measures that include:
A)large differences between the levels of the variable.
B)measurement error.
C)ceiling effects.
D)multiple increments of the variable.
Q2) Which of the following is NOT a method researchers used to identify or correct for attrition?
A)Drop the original/pretest scores of participants who left the study
B)Not allow participants to leave a study once it has started
C)Determine whether those who dropped out of the study had a different pattern of scores than those who stayed in the study
D)Use a control group
Q3) Dr. Deveraux has conducted a study that has resulted in a null effect. Nonetheless, she suspects that there truly is a causal relationship between her independent and dependent variables. Which of the following is UNLIKELY to be to blame?
A)A weak manipulation
B)An insensitive measure
C)Too many participants
D)A reverse confound
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Chapter 12: Experiments With More Than One Independent
Variable
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Q1) Imagine that you are reading a journal article and you see the following sentence: "The study used a 2 × 2 × 4 design." Where are you likely to have encountered this sentence?
A)The introduction
B)The Method section
C)The Results section
D)The Discussion section
Q2) What does the author of the textbook mean when she writes, "We don't live in a main effect world"?
A)She means that psychologists do not like to examine main effects.
B)She means that main effects are not important.
C)She means that interactions are common in everyday life.
D)She means that studies that produce interactions are the only studies worth conducting.
Q3) According to the textbook, why is it important to study interactions?
A)They are more scientific than other analyses.
B)Many outcomes in psychology are interactions.
C)They are more complicated than other analyses.
D)They are easier to understand than main effects.
Q4) State the three types of factorial designs.
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Chapter 13: Quasi-Experiments and Small-N Designs
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Q1) Dr. Fletcher is interested in understanding whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale, where higher scores indicate higher body concerns).
Explain why Dr. Fletcher is conducting a quasi-experimental design rather than a true experiment.
Q2) Explain why quasi-experiments offer a trade-off between internal validity and external validity.
Q3) Lara is conducting a study for her research methods class. She is curious if participating in a collegiate study-abroad program causes people to become more accepting of other cultures. Provide an example of an independent-groups quasi-experimental design and an example of a within-groups quasi-experimental design using Lara's research question.
Q4) Explain why quasi-experiments and correlational studies can be seen as similar but why quasi-experiments are superior.
Q5) List three small-N designs and explain how these designs address maturation.
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Chapter 14: Replication, Generalization, and the Real World
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Q1) Responsible journalists do which of the following as it pertains to discussing replicability?
A)They report only on studies that have been directly replicated.
B)They report findings only from meta-analyses.
C)They provide readers with a sense of the entire literature as well as recent studies.
D)They provide readers with statistical values from each study.
Q2) Which of the following is true of experimental realism?
A)It exists only in field settings.
B)It is a synonymous term for mundane realism.
C)It supports external validity.
D)It is only important in generalization mode.
Q3) A researcher in theory-testing mode focuses on validity, while a researcher in generalization mode focuses on validity.
A)internal; external
B)external; internal
C)external; statistical
D)statistical; external
Q4) What is preregistration? Why is it important in the scientific process?
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