Questions and Answers of Methods Behavioral Research

What are main effects in a factorial design? What is an interaction?
What is a factorial design? Why would a researcher use a factorial design?
Why would a researcher have more than two levels of the independent variable in an experiment?
What does a researcher do with the findings after completing a research project?
Describe the value of a debriefing following the study.
What is a manipulation check? How does it help the researcher interpret the results of an experiment?
What are experimenter expectancy effects? What are some solutions to the experimenter bias problem?
Design an experiment using a staged manipulation to test the hypothesis that when people are in a good mood, they are more likely to contribute to a charitable cause. Include a manipulation check in
What is the reason for a placebo group?
What are demand characteristics? Describe ways to minimize demand characteristics.
What is meant by the sensitivity of a dependent measure? What are ceiling and floor effects?
What are the general types of dependent variables?
What is the difference between staged and straightforward manipulations of an independent variable?
The procedure used to obtain your sample (i.e., random or nonrandom sampling) is not the same as the procedure for assigning participants to conditions; distinguish between random sampling and random
When would a researcher decide to use the matched pairs design? What would be the advantages of this design?
What are some of the ways of dealing with the problems of a repeated measures design?
What is a repeated measures design? What are the advantages of using a repeated measures design? What are the disadvantages?
Distinguish between the posttest-only design and the pretest-posttest design. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
How do the two true experimental designs eliminate the problem of selection differences?
What is meant by the internal validity of an experiment?
Why don’t researchers who want to test hypotheses about the relationships between variables worry a great deal about random sampling?
Distinguish between haphazard and quota sampling.
Distinguish between simple random, stratified random, and cluster sampling.
Distinguish between probability and nonprobability sampling techniques. What are the implications of each?
How does sample size affect the interpretation of survey results?
What is a social desirability response set?
Define interviewer bias.
Compare the different questionnaire, interview, and Internet survey administration methods.
Suppose you want to know how many books in a bookstore have only male authors, only female authors, or both male and female authors (the “bookstore” in this case might be a large retail store,
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using questionnaires versus interviews in a survey?
What are some factors to take into consideration when constructing questions for surveys (including both questions and response alternatives)?
Select a topic for a survey. Write at least five closed-ended questions that you might include in the survey. For each question, write one “good” version and one “poor” version. For each poor
What is a survey? Describe some research questions you might address with a survey.
In the Chandra et al. (2008) study on television viewing and teen pregnancy, exposure to television with sexual content was associated with a higher likelihood for teen pregnancy. Can you conclude
What is archival research? What are the major sources of archival data?
What is a case study? When are case studies used? What is a psychobiography?
What is a coding system? What are some important considerations when developing a coding system?
What is systematic observation? Why are the data from systematic observation primarily quantitative?
Read each scenario below and determine whether a case study, naturalistic observation, systematic observation, or archival research was used. Archival Systematic Case study observation observation
Distinguish between participant and nonparticipant observation; between concealed and nonconcealed observation.
Why are the data in naturalistic observation research primarily qualitative?
What is naturalistic observation? How does a researcher collect data when conducting naturalistic observation research?
Distinguish between nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales.
What is a reactive measure?
Think of an important characteristic that you would look for in a potential romantic partner, such as humorous, intelligent, attractive, hardworking, religious, and so on. How might you measure that
Why isn’t face validity sufficient to establish the validity of a measure?
Take a personality test on the Internet (you can find such tests using Internet search engines). Based on the information provided, what can you conclude about the test’s reliability, construct
Discuss the concept of construct validity. Distinguish among the indicators of construct validity.
Describe the methods of determining the reliability of a measure.
Conduct a PsycINFO search to find information on the construct validity of a psychological measure. Specify construct validity as a search term along with terms such as aptitude test, personality
What is meant by the reliability of a measure? Distinguish between true score and measurement error.
What are some reasons for using the nonexperimental method to study relationships between variables?
How do direct experimental control and randomization influence the possible effects of extraneous variables?
What is meant by the problem of direction of cause and effect and the third-variable problem?
Distinguish between laboratory and field experiments.
Consider the hypothesis that stress at work causes family conflict at home.a. What type of relationship is proposed (e.g., positive linear, negative linear)?b. Graph the proposed relationship.c.
Distinguish among positive linear, negative linear, and curvilinear relationships.
Define “operational definition” of a variable. Give at least two operational definitions of the variables you thought of in the previous review question.
Males and females may differ in their approaches to helping others. For example, males may be more likely to help a person having car trouble, and females may be more likely to bring dinner to a sick
What constitutes fraud, what are some reasons for its occurrence, and why doesn’t it occur more frequently?
Summarize the ethical procedures for research with animals.
What is a variable? List at least five different variables and then describe at least two levels of each variable. For example, age is a variable. For adults, age has values that can be expressed in
Read the following research scenarios and assess the risk to participants by placing a check mark in the appropriate box. Can you explain the basis for your answers?
What is an Institutional Review Board?
What is the difference between “no risk” and “minimal risk” research activities?
Should people who are observed in field experiments be debriefed? Write a paragraph supporting the pro position and another paragraph supporting the con position.
Summarize the principles concerning research with human participants in the APA Ethics Code.
What alternatives to deception are described in the text?
Why is informed consent an ethical principle? What are the potential problems with obtaining fully informed consent?
Discuss the major ethical issues in behavioral research including risks, benefits, deception, debriefing, informed consent, and justice. How can researchers weigh the need to conduct research against
What information does the researcher communicate in each of the sections of a research article?
Theories serve two purposes: (1) To organize and explain observable events and (2) To generate new knowledge by guiding our way of looking at these events. Identify a consistent
Describe the difference in the way that past research is found when you use PsycINFO versus the “key article” method of the Science Citation Index/Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science).
What are the two functions of a theory?
What is a hypothesis? What is the distinction between a hypothesis and a prediction?
How does basic research differ from applied research?
Identify ways that you might have allowed yourself to accept beliefs or engage in practices that you might have rejected if you had engaged in scientific skepticism. For example, we continually have
Describe the characteristics of the way that science works, according to Goodstein (2000).
A newspaper headline says, “Eating Disorders May Be More Common in Warm Places.” You read the article to discover that a researcher found that the incidence of eating disorders among female
Describe the three elements for inferring causation.
Imagine a debate on the following assertion: Knowledge of research methods is unnecessary for students who intend to pursue careers in clinical and counseling psychology. Develop arguments that
Provide definitions and examples of description, prediction, determination of cause, and explanation as goals of scientific research.
Imagine a debate on the following assertion: Behavioral scientists should only conduct research that has immediate practical applications. Develop arguments that support (pro) and oppose (con) the
Why is scientific skepticism useful in furthering our knowledge of behavior? How does the scientific approach differ from other ways of gaining knowledge about behavior?
Read several editorials in your daily newspaper and identify the sources used to support the assertions and conclusions. Did the writer use intuition, appeals to authority, scientific evidence, or a
Why is it important for anyone in our society to have knowledge of research methods?
Suppose that you work for the child social services agency in your county. Your job is to investigate instances of possible child neglect or abuse. After collecting your evidence, which may come from
In an experiment, one group of research participants is given 10 pages of material to proofread for errors. Another group proofreads the same material on a computer screen. The dependent variable is
Refer to the figure below, then select the correct answer to questions a, b, and c.The size (value) of the coefficient indicates the strength of the relationship.The sign (plus or minus) of the
A student club is trying to decide whether to implement a peer tutoring program for students who are enrolled in the statistics class in your department. Club members who have completed the
Identify the independent and dependent variables in the following descriptions of experiments:a. Students watched a cartoon either alone or with others and then rated how funny they found the cartoon
Prior to the start of the school year, Mr. King reviewed the cumulative folders of the students in his fourth-grade class. He found that the standard deviation of the students’ scores on the
Hill (1990) studied the correlations between final exam score in an introductory sociology course and several other variables such as number of absences. The following Pearson r correlation
Dr. Cardenas studied political attitudes among different groups of 20-, 40-, and 60-year-olds. Political attitudes were found to be most conservative in the age-60 group and least conservative in the
For the preceding situation, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a quasi-experimental design in contrast to conducting a true experiment.
The captain of each precinct of a metropolitan police department selected two officers to participate in a program designed to reduce prejudice by increasing sensitivity to racial and ethnic group
Gilovich (1991) described an incident that he read about during a visit to Israel. A very large number of deaths had occurred during a brief time period in one region of the country. A group of
Dr. Smith learned that one sorority on campus had purchased several Macintosh computers and another sorority had purchased several Windows-based computers. Dr. Smith was interested in whether the
Your best friend frequently suffers from severe headaches. You’ve noticed that your friend consumes a great deal of diet cola, and so you consider the hypothesis that the artificial sweetener in
Your dog gets lonely while you are at work and consequently engages in destructive activities such as pulling down curtains or strewing wastebasket contents all over the floor. You decide that

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