Exam 6: Research Strategies and Validity

A researcher finds that a particular medication causes rats' memory to improve. A second researcher plans to test this medication with humans diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The second researcher is addressing the problem of ____.

Which research strategy is least concerned with examining relationships between variables?

An extraneous variable is any variable that is inadvertently part of a research study but not directly investigated.

Which question can be addressed with a descriptive strategy?

The degree to which your research results generalize beyond the specific characteristics of your study refers to ____.

A study examining the relationship between humor and memory compares memory performance scores for one group presented with humorous sentences and a second group presented with nonhumorous sentences. The participants in both groups consist of a mixture of males and females. In this study, gender (male/female) is best characterized as a(n) ____ variable.

A study examining the relationship between humor and memory compares memory performance scores for one group presented with humorous sentences and a second group presented with nonhumorous sentences. The participants presented with the humorous sentences are all males. The participants presented with the nonhumorous sentences are all females. In this study, gender (male/female) is best characterized as a(n) ____ variable.

Experimenter bias and participant reactivity can threaten both internal and external validity.

Sensitization can threaten external validity because the results obtained in a study may be limited to ____.

Of all the research strategies that investigate relationships between variables, the correlational strategy is the only one that does not involve comparing groups of scores.

Both correlational and nonexperimental studies intend to examine relationships between variables without trying to explain the relationships.

Experimental and nonexperimental studies both involve comparing groups of scores.

Any factor that limits the ability to generalize the results of a research study to different populations or different environments is a threat to external validity.

The problem with using college students as research participants is that college students are not perfectly representative of the general adult population.

Volunteer bias is a threat to external validity.

A researcher who is studying methods of decreasing test anxiety decides to measure anxiety in a group of volunteers both before and after an experimental intervention. He finds that anxiety levels are lower after the intervention. However, when reviewing his results, the researcher notes that the first test occurred about a week before midterm exams and the second test occurred two weeks after the exams. This study appears to have a problem with ____.

A research design is a general approach that is intended to address a specific question.

Any factor that limits the ability to generalize the results of the study is a threat to ____.

When the data points in a scatter plot are all over the place with no clear pattern, it is an indication that there is no consistent relationship between the two variables.

As the values for one variable increase from one person to another, the values for a second variable tend to decrease. This is an example of a(n) ____ relationship.