Exam 3: The Research Enterprise in Psychology Part 1

A disadvantage or limitation of the experimental research method is

Dr. Kincaid was interested in the topic of autistic savants (individuals with limited abilities in many areas, but with an exceptional talent in one specific area). In the initial part of the investigation Dr. Kincaid carefully observed and compiled detailed files on three individuals who were autistic savants. Dr. Kincaid is conducting

Researchers who were studying plant growth raised plants in two separate rooms. One room had taped conversations playing 24 hours a day; the other room was silent. The researchers found that the plants grew better in the room which had the conversations playing. In this study, the type of room (conversation or silence) would be

Jackson is working with a company to help them develop more effective training programs for their employees. He has spent a great deal of time reviewing all the documentation the company has about previous training opportunities they have provided for their employees. Up to this point in time, Jackson has been engaged in

Manipulating a variable under carefully controlled conditions and observing the changes in a second variable defines

Your grade point average is an example of which measure of central tendency?

As interest rates increase, house sales decline, indicating

The research method in which a researcher conducts an in-depth investigation of an individual subject is the

If a researcher varies the loudness of music in a factory to observe its effect on the rate of productivity of the employees, the dependent variable is the

Researchers use ____ to determine whether the observed difference between the two groups in the study was large enough to support the hypothesis.

Based on the information on getting more out of lectures presented in the personal application section in chapter 1, absences from classes and grade average in the class would be

Dr. Hackle has found that no matter how students score on the first midterm, all the students in her class tend to score between 75% and 80% on her final exam. This suggests that

Suppose a researcher discovered a +.87 correlation between the length of a person's toes and the number of shoes the person owns. In general, people who own the fewest number of shoes would have

In the Featured Study on how expectations influence reaction to positive and negative outcomes, one of the independent variables was

The principal advantage of descriptive/correlational research methods is they

A clinical psychologist notes that an unusually large number of obese people are depressed or anxious, and she offers an explanation that excess weight causes emotional disorders. Her explanation is a(n)

An industrial designer wants to determine if the new design for a piece of office equipment will result in fewer errors. The designer sets up a machine with the old design in one room, and a machine with the new design in a second room. He counts how many errors are made using each of the two machines. In this study, the number of errors that are made would be

Going to a playground for an hour each day for two weeks and recording girl-boy exchanges would be an example of

The scientific approach requires that people specify exactly what they are talking about when they formulate hypotheses. Which advantage of scientific investigation does this illustrate?

Any measurable conditions, events, characteristics, or behaviors that are controlled or observed in a study are called