Research Methods Exam 2 – Flashcards
Unlock all answers in this set
Unlock answersquestion
In psychological research, investigators sample individuals' behavior at different times or in different situations. The goal of sampling behavior is to...
answer
obtain a representative sample of behavior.
question
Time sampling and situation sampling are used to increase what characteristic of observational findings?
answer
external validity
question
Researchers use time sampling to obtain...
answer
a representative sample of behavior.
question
In using time sampling to gain a representative sample of behavior, the intervals in which the observations are to be made should be selected...
answer
either randomly or systematically, or both!
question
Time sampling is not an effective method for sampling behavior that occurs infrequently. To observe behaviors in situations that occur infrequently, researchers choose...
answer
event sampling.
question
Researchers who studied beer drinking among college students made their observations in five town bars, a student center, and a fraternity party. They were better able to generalize their findings because they used...
answer
situation sampling.
question
A researcher seeks to describe behavior at an airport security screening area during a busy holiday travel time. Because there are far too many people for the researcher to observe effectively, she should use...
answer
subject sampling.
question
What is the most likely reason that researcher studying aggressiveness of children would choose to use naturalistic observation?
answer
Naturalistic observation is the preferred method when moral and ethical limitations apply to the topic under investigation.
question
What observational method does not use intervention by the researcher?
answer
Naturalistic observation
question
When a researcher plays an active and significant role in the situation in which behavior is being recorded and when the researcher conceals the fact that observations are being made, the study represents a...
answer
disguised participant observation.
question
The primary reason when Rosenhan (1973) used participant observation to study psychiatric diagnosis in the context of a mental institution by having "pseudopatients" seek admission was to...
answer
gain access to a situation or event that is generally not open to scientific investigation.
question
Under what circumstance is a participant observer more likely to have a significant effect on the behavior of the subjects being observed?
answer
When the group under observation is small and the activities of the participant observer are prominent
question
A researcher interested in "inattentional blindness" has a confederate walk across a stage holding a large sign during the first class of an introductory psychology course. At the end of the class, assistants ask departing students if they know what the sign said. This is an example of...
answer
structured observation.
question
In order to conduct a structured observation or a field experiment, researchers make use of _____ to create the observation situation.
answer
confederates
question
Clinical psychologists who make behavioral assessments of parent-child interactions are likely making use of an observation technique called...
answer
structured observation
question
One main disadvantage of structured observation is...
answer
failure to follow similar procedures each time an observation is made may make it difficult for other observers to obtain similar results.
question
Researchers conducted a study on invasion of personal space. A confederate of the researcher sat on a public bench and either stared at a person walking by or read a newspaper while a person walked by the bench. An observer recorded whether the person walking looked away from where the confederate was sitting. What type of observational study does this study represent?
answer
structured observation
question
In a field experiment, the investigator...
answer
always manipulates an independent variable in a natural setting.
question
When individuals are not aware of the presence of an observer, as when data from physical traces or archival records are analyzed, the observation is described as...
answer
unobtrusive.
question
The problem of reactive measurement is _____ when unobtrusive observation is used.
answer
eliminated
question
The remnants/fragments of past behavior the provide unobtrusive measure of behavior are called...
answer
physical traces.
question
The degree to which a young child's dolls show signs of wear might indicate which dolls the child likes the best. This potential physical trace measure would be described as a...
answer
natural-use trace.
question
The distinction between natural-use traces and controlled-use traces is similar to the distinction between...
answer
observations without intervention and observations with intervention.
question
Research studies have examined evidence of past human behavior, including works of art, television shows, and bumper stickers, to test various hypotheses. This source of unobtrusive evidence is called...
answer
products.
question
Two types of archival records are...
answer
running records and episodic records.
question
A researcher uses archival records to investigate whether divorce rates in a city change following major catastrophes (i.e. hurricane, terrorism). This represent the use of...
answer
natural treatments.
question
Newspaper advice columnists print only a fraction of the letters they receive. Analysis of the printed letters is likely limited by the problem of...
answer
selective deposit.
question
A researcher tries to show that the frequency of traffic accidents increases in warmer weather. This researcher need to consider whether there are more cars on the road when it is warmer. This "number of cars" variable must be considered to make sure the relationship between traffic accidents and temperature is not a...
answer
spurious relationship.
question
When a more or less faithful reproduction of behavior as it originally occurred is recorded in either written form or through the use of audio or video recording, the resulting description of behavior in an observation study is called a...
answer
narrative record.
question
For both physical and psychological measurement the lowest scale of measurement involves categorizing the stimulus into one of a number of discrete categories (i.e. male or female). This level of measurement is called a...
answer
nominal scale.
question
A school superintendent has received a report from the state that lists the ranking of schools in terms of the students' performance on the state's achievement test. Which scale of measurement is represented in this report?
answer
ordinal scale
question
When observers are asked to use a rating scale to measure a psychological dimension such as aggressiveness or anxiety, the researchers must decide whether these rating represent a...
answer
ordinal or interval scale.
question
Frequency of occurrence can represent either of two measurement scales depending upon whether only a single observation of each person is made or several observations of the same individual are made. Frequency of occurrence can represent either...
answer
interval or ratio scales.
question
When many observations of the same children in a classroom are made it is possible to determine the frequency of certain behaviors such as how many times children speak in class. Which scale of measurement do these frequency data represent?
answer
ratio
question
The first step in the analysis of narrative records often consists of identifying units of behavior according to specific criteria. This process is called...
answer
coding.
question
When events are classified into mutually exclusive categories on a nominal scale (i.e. brown-eyed or blue-eyed), the most common descriptive measure is...
answer
data coding.
question
A researcher studying interpersonal communication measured the time that couples made eye contact during a conversation. Which descriptive statistics will most commonly be used to describe the researcher's duration measurements?
answer
mean and standard deviation
question
Low interobserver reliability is likely a result because of...
answer
lack of clear definitions of events to be recorded.
question
What is true about interobserver reliability?
answer
Interobserver reliability is generally increased by clearly defining the events that are to be observed.
question
Two student researchers wish to determine the degree of observer reliability they achieved in their study. They observed individual students who were approaching another person on a campus path. The two observers both independently recorded whether or not the observed student greeted the other person. What measure should the student researchers use to asses observer reliability?
answer
percentage agreement measure
question
Although there is no hard-and-fast percentage of agreement that defines low interobserver reliability, the literature of observation studies reveals that researchers generally report interobserver reliabilites that are at least as high as...
answer
85 percent.
question
The Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) can be used to measure interobserver reliability when...
answer
the behavioral data have been measured on at least an interval scale.
question
The two pieces of information obtained from a correlation coefficient are...
answer
the direction and strength of the relationship between two variables.
question
When individuals are aware they are being observed we need to be concerned about problems of...
answer
reactivity.
question
Students conducted a naturalistic observation to study whether people arriving at the library alone would be more likely to hold the door open for a person coming in immediately after them than would people who arrived in pairs. The students made their observations looking through the window of a classroom building across from the library. They chose this observation sight to avoid the potential problem of...
answer
reactivity.
question
Some researchers argue that hypnosis is a special state of consciousness; other researchers disagree. They argue that when the hypnosis procedure is used, individuals simply respond to the cues and instructions of the hypnotist in order to know how to respond. These cues are called...
answer
demand characteristics.
question
These cues and other information used by participants to guide their behavior in a psychological study are called...
answer
demand characteristics.
question
Researchers were doing a long-term study of children's relationships with their parent in the homes of the families. Before beginning to collect data, the observers visited each home a few times and set up their recording equipment and recorded behavior just as they would do in the data collection phase of their study. These early visits to the home were done to reduce reactivity. What technique did the researchers use?
answer
habituation
question
Ethologists such as Diane Fossey (who studied mountain gorillas) use a technique to adapt animal subjects to the presence of an observer by gradually increasing the time they spend in the animals' environment. This technique is called...
answer
desensitization.
question
Students conducted a research project in which they hypothesized that women, more than men, would stop studying and look at each person who enters a library study room. Results indicated that women did make more head movements than men when people entered the library. To be confident about these results, we would want to make sure their results are not affected by...
answer
expectancy effects.
question
Probably the most important control over observer bias is...
answer
the awareness that observer bias might be present.
question
In order to minimize observer bias, researchers should...
answer
limit the amount of information observers have about the hypothesis.
question
To avoid observer bias researchers may not tell the observers why observations are being made or the goals of the study. In this situation the observers are said to be...
answer
blind.
question
Surveys play an important role in a type of research that is intended to assess the covariation of naturally occurring variables with the goal of identifying predictive relationships. This general type of research is called...
answer
correlational research.
question
The quantitative index of the direction and magnitude of a predictive relationship is called a...
answer
correlation coefficient.
question
Surveys play an important role in the type of research that is intended to assess the covariation between naturally occurring variables. This type of research is called...
answer
correlational research.
question
A professor wants to determine if students' final exam scores in a course can be predicted based on their scores on the first test. The quantitative index the professor is likely using in this situation is the...
answer
correlation coefficient.
question
In sampling, the specific list of the elements of the population is called the...
answer
sampling frame.
question
A sampling frame in survey research could be considered a _____ of the population.
answer
representative sample
question
The goal of sampling is to identify a _____ that will be representative of the ______.
answer
sample, population
question
Survey researchers are most interested in...
answer
generalizing responses from a sample to the population.
question
The ability to generalize the results from a survey sample to the population of interest depends most critically on the sample's...
answer
representativeness.
question
When the distribution of characteristics in a sample is systematically different from that of the target population, the sample is called a...
answer
biased sample.
question
A survey researcher chose to administer a survey using the Internet. This sample likely overrepresents people who own a computer and underrepresents people who don't own a computer. This problem in the researcher's survey is best described as...
answer
selection bias.
question
A survey using the Internet to ask people about attitudes toward mental health services would most likely be criticized for...
answer
selection bias.
question
The problem of selection bias in survey research is similar to the problem of _____ in research using archival data.
answer
selective deposit
question
Suppose a recent issue of the campus newspaper reported a survey about students' attitudes toward proposed changes in the required curriculum. What would you need to focus on most to decide whether the survey results reported in the paper can be generalized to the entire population of students?
answer
representativeness of the sample
question
A TV reporter interviewed several dozen people at the scene of a political demonstration about their views of the people doing the demonstrating. In the terminology of survey research, the reporter has gathered a...
answer
convenience sample.
question
In as simple random sample, every individual in the population...
answer
has an equal chance of being selected to be in the sample.
question
The decision of how many people needed in a random sample to represent the population should be based on the...
answer
degree of variability in the population.
