Questions and Answers of Research Methods In Psychology

Outline briefly the logic of the F -test.
Describe an advantage of using measures of effect size, and explain how power analysis may be used when a finding is not statistically significant.
Differentiate between Type I and Type II errors as they occur when carrying out NHST.
The standard deviation for the data set in Question 5 is 1.78. What does this value tell you?Data From Question 5Calculate the mean, median, and mode for the following data set: 7,7,2,4,2,4,5,6,4,5.
Construct a stem-and-leaf display for the following set of numbers; then, report what you have learned by examining the data in this way. 36,42,25,26,26,21,22,43,40,69,21,
Why is a confidence interval also called a “margin of error”?
A random sample of 25 students was asked their opinion of the food service in the college dining hall. Students used a 7-point scale (1 = horrible, 7 = great) to indicate their opinion. The mean
What is the 95% confidence interval for the difference between the two means reported in Question 8? What is the correct interpretation of this interval?Data From Questions 8:A study was done to
How do you use confidence intervals to reach a conclusion about differences among means in a study with three or more means?
When inspecting data depicted in a scatterplot, why is it important to look for a linear trend in the data?
What does it mean to say that the results of a statistical test are “statistically significant”?
A social psychologist compares three kinds of propaganda messages on college students’ attitudes toward the war on terrorism. Ninety ( N = 90) students are randomly assigned in equal numbers to the
What three factors determine the power of a statistical test? Which factor is the primary one that researchers can use to control power?
A developmental psychologist gives 4th-, 6th-, and 8th-grade children two types of critical thinking tests. There are 28 children tested at each grade level; 14 received one form (A or B) of the
Why is a repeated measures design likely to be more sensitive than a random groups design?
Why may a statistically significant result be neither scientifically nor practically significant?
Distinguish between the information you gain from an omnibus F -test and from comparisons of two means.
What is the primary way that a repeated measures ANOVA differs from that of an ANOVA for independent groups?
How does a simple main effect differ from an overall main effect?
A researcher investigates whether there is a relationship between vocabulary size and performance on a reading comprehension test. Each of 15 sixth-grade students is given both a vocabulary test and
Explain whether you could use the correlation you computed in Question 14 to support the claim that increasing vocabulary size causes increases in reading comprehension.Data From Question 14A
A researcher conducts an experiment comparing two methods of teaching young children to read. An older method is compared with a newer one, and the mean performance of the new method was found to be
A study was done to investigate a newly created drug to increase memory performance. The study was done with rats. The dependent measure was number of errors made while learning a maze after being
What does the estimated standard error of the mean tell you about a sample mean?
Calculate the mean, median, and mode for the following data set: 7,7,2,4,2,4,5,6,4,5. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of the three measures of central tendency: mean, median, mode.
Why must a researcher have a good knowledge of research methodology and statistical procedures to be able to use computer software to analyze results of a study?
What does a researcher attempt to do when constructing an “analysis story” to go with the results of a study?
Identify the three major stages of data analysis and indicate what specific things a researcher typically will look to do at each stage.
In this chapter you learned that Milgram’s wellknown research study was recently replicated, but conducted under conditions imposed to better safeguard the welfare of the participants (Burger,
In each of the following descriptions of research studies, you are to identify the independent variable(s). You should also be able to identify at least one dependent variable in each study.A. A
A psychologist conducted an experiment to test the hypothesis that individuals embedded in their ingroup culture would be less likely to help a stranger.College students were recruited to respond to
Describe two important characteristics of the scientific method.
Consider the hypothesis that playing violent video games causes people to be more aggressive compared to watching violence passively on television.A. How might you test this hypothesis? That is, what
Why did early psychologists choose the empirical approach as the favored method for psychological investigations?
Researchers use their observations of behavior to make inferences about psychological concepts.For example, “boredom” could be measured by counting the number of times someone moves (fidgets) in
Identify two ways in which the computer was critical to the development of psychology in the 20th century.
Identify how ethnocentric bias might influence each of the following research questions, then propose an alternative to reduce ethnocentric bias.A. A researcher seeks to determine whether happiness
Form hypotheses by linking an event or behavior from the first column with an outcome from the second column, and then identify a possible explanation from the third column. Use each event, outcome,
Provide an example of(1) How social and cultural factors may influence psychologists’ choice of research topics(2) How social-cultural factors may influence society’s acceptance of research
Describe how ethnocentric bias can be a problem in research and suggest one way in which researchers can prevent this bias.
What does it mean that research is conducted in a “moral context”?
Describe two ethical dilemmas that psychologists may face when conducting research.
Explain why researchers are skeptical about research findings, and explain how their attitude likely differs from that of the general public.
Identify three reasons you would give another person as to why he or she should critically evaluate the results of the research reported in the media (e.g., self-help books, television, magazines).
What are the three initial steps researchers take as they begin a research project?
Identify two reasons it is important to search the psychological research literature when beginning research.
Describe the multimethod approach to research and identify its main advantage.
For each of the following characteristics, distinguish between the scientific approach and everyday approaches to knowledge: general approach and attitude, observation, concepts, reporting,
Differentiate between an independent variable and a dependent variable, and provide an example of each that could be used in an experiment.
What is the major advantage of using operational definitions in psychology? In what two ways has the use of operational definitions been criticized?
In a widely distributed news report in March 2013, researchers linked 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide (including about 25,000 in America) to the consumption of sugary beverages such as soda,
A study was done to determine whether the use of “clickers” as an instructional method would improve students’ test performance in an educational psychology class (Mayer et al., 2009). In the
Distinguish between the accuracy and the precision of a measuring instrument.
What is the difference between the validity of a measure and the reliability of a measure?
Which three types of hypotheses lack the critical characteristic of being testable?
Identify the four goals of the scientific method and briefly describe what each goal is intended to accomplish.
Distinguish between the nomothetic approach and the idiographic approach in terms of who is studied and the nature of the generalizations that are sought.
Identify two differences between quantitative and qualitative research.
What are researchers able to do when they know that two variables are correlated?
Give an example from a research study described in the text that illustrates each of the three conditions for a causal inference.
What is an intervening variable? Propose a psychological construct that could serve as an intervening variable between “insult” (present/absent) and “aggressive responses.” Explain how these
Describe the roles of logical consistency and empirical testing in evaluating a scientific theory.
Explain why rigorous tests of a theory that seek to falsify a theory’s propositions can be more informative than tests that seek to confirm a theory’s propositions.
Explain why researchers submit research proposals to Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) before beginning a research project, and briefly
Unlike in other chapters, no answers to the Challenge Questions or Stretching Exercises are provided in this chapter. To resolve ethical dilemmas, you must be able to apply the appropriate ethical
Explain how the risk/benefit ratio is used in making ethical decisions. What factors contribute to judging the potential benefits of a research project?
IACUC Proposal Instructions Assume you are a member of an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Besides yourself, the committee includes a veterinarian, a biologist, a philosopher, and
What must authors include when submitting a research manuscript to an APA journal?
Explain why research cannot be risk free and describe the standard that researchers use to determine whether research participants are “at risk.” Describe briefly how characteristics of the
Differentiate among the three possible types of risk that can be present in psychological research: physical, psychological, social. How do researchers typically safeguard against the possibility of
Consider the following variation of a scenario presented by Fine and Kurdek (1993) as part of their discussion of the issue of determining authorship of a publication.An undergraduate student asked a
What are three important ethical issues raised by online research?
What information does the researcher have an ethical obligation to make clear to the participant in order to ensure the participant’s informed consent? Under what conditions does the APA Ethics
What three dimensions should researchers consider when they attempt to decide whether information is public or private?
Explain why deception may sometimes be necessary in psychological research. Describe briefly the questions researchers should ask before using deception, and describe the conditions under which it is
In what ways can debriefing benefit the participant? In what ways can debriefing benefi t the researcher?
What ethical obligations are specified in the APA Ethics Code for researchers who use animals in their research?
What conditions are required by the APA Ethics Code before animals may be subjected to stress or pain?
Explain how researchers decide when an individual can be credited as an author of a published scientific report.
Describe the procedures an author must follow to avoid plagiarism when citing information from an original source or from a secondary source.
Identify the steps in an ethically informed decision process regarding whether a proposed research project should be conducted.
Describe the types of sampling researchers use in observational studies and what the proper use of sampling is intended to accomplish.
Students in a developmental psychology lab course conducted an observational study of parent–infant interactions in the home. When they first entered the home on each of the 4 days they observed a
Explain the difference between direct and indirect observational methods and how the degree of intervention can be used to distinguish direct observational methods.
An observational study was done to assess the effects of environmental infl uences on drinking by college students in a university-sponsored pub. Eighty-two students over the age of 21 were observed.
Describe a research situation in which naturalistic observation can be useful when ethical considerations prevent researchers from intervening to study behavior.
An American psychology graduate student, raised in Germany until age 16, wishes to explore how Germans and Americans use the social networking site, Facebook. She speaks fluent German and has many
Explain why reactivity is a problem in observational studies.
Four students were doing internships at the Social Science Research Institute of their university. The research institute had a contract to do a series of studies on traffic safety for the downtown
What ethical issues are raised when a participant observation study is conducted online?
Explain why physical traces and archival data are attractive alternatives to direct observation.
Describe the different types of physical-trace measures available to psychologists and the ways in which these measures may be biased.
Explain how archival data may be used to test the effect of a natural treatment.
Explain how selective deposit, selective survival, and spurious relationships may bias the interpretation of archival records.
Give an example using each of the four measurement scales to describe how a researcher could measure eye contact between pairs of people in conversation with each other.
Describe how data reduction and coding are used in qualitative analyses of narrative records and archival data.
What are the most common descriptive (a) When events are measured on a nominal scale,(b) When items are ranked using an ordinal scale,(c) When behavior is recorded on at least an interval scale.
Describe the procedures researchers can use to increase interobserver reliability.
Identify the measurement scales that require a correlation coefficient to assess interobserver reliability, and explain what a negative correlation would indicate in this situation.
Describe two ways in which observer bias (expectancy effects) can occur in psychological research.

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