Exam 2: Research in Psychology

Randy,a community psychologist,is working with a community AIDS organization on a project to help reduce HIV transmission.He decides to gather as much information from as many people as possible about their sexual behavior patterns.Which research method would be the best choice for him to use?

The school psychologist at Happy Elementary School conducts a study where the students of one fourth-grade class are given five recesses during the day,while students in the other class are allowed the standard two recesses.The psychologist explains to the teachers that more breaks should lead to better behavior in the classrooms and then has the teachers observe the children's progress.In this experiment,there is the risk of ____.

Marney is studying the relationship between the rate of teen pregnancies in U.S.high school students and the availability of contraceptives.She selects a sample composed of teens from a local high school.Marney's sample may not be generalizable because it is not ____.

In research,uncontrollable factors such as the temperature of the room,the mood of the participants,and chance effects are considered ____ variables.

Dr.Noyd conducts an experiment to determine whether talking to a psychiatrist makes depressed people less depressed.He randomly divides participants who scored highly on a depressive inventory into two groups.Group A discusses their problems with a psychiatrist while Group B does nothing.He finds that Group A shows significantly more improvement in their depression than does Group B.In Dr.Noyd's experiment,the experimental group refers to the ____.

A participant in an experiment is told that a particular pill should improve her performance on a cognitive task.The participant is then given the pill,and she performs better than usual on the task.In actuality,the pill did not contain any ingredients that would affect her performance on the task.The participant's improved performance is most likely due to ____.

Dr.Essen wants to conduct a study on eating habits.He suspects that there are both environmental and genetic influences that affect a person's eating behavior.To study this behavioral genetics topic,Dr.Essen will likely conduct a ____ study.

For his sociology research paper,Sawyer would like to report descriptive statistics from his survey findings.In other words,the statistics Sawyer plans to report will ____.

On the first day of Introductory Philosophy class,Nora asks her students to provide a definition of the term critical thinking.Having aced Introductory Psychology last semester,Cassie knows that critical thinking is ____.

A researcher is interested in determining whether test performance of students can be improved by providing them with individual tutoring.The researcher randomly divides fifty first-year college students into two groups.In Group A,the instructor lectures to them for three hours per week.Group B receives an equal amount of lecturing,but their instructor also meets with each student for thirty minutes every week.Each group takes the same final exam.The test performance of students in Group B is about the same as that of students in Group A.This study is an example of a(n)____.

It has been said that laughter is the best medicine,but can research really substantiate or discredit this assertion? Imagine that you have been hired to find out if laughter is an effective treatment for the common cold.As you describe your experimental design,address the following questions: What are your independent and dependent variables? How will you operationally define your variables? Who will participate in your research,and how will you select them?

Malcolm administers a survey of people's attitudes about the relationship between exercise and stress level.What is the independent variable?

Yasou calls people and asks them a specified list of questions concerning their opinions of how irritating telemarketers can be.What kind of research is Yasou conducting?

Cornelius is interested in studying cooperation in children between the ages of two and six.He suspects that cooperation is greatest in groups of girls as opposed to groups of boys or coed groups.After carrying out his observation,he decides to examine the results to determine any relationships between gender and cooperation.Cornelius is planning to carry out a(n)____.

Dr.Fontenot is studying the effects of fatigue on aggression.He hypothesizes that the more fatigue a person is experiencing,the more aggressively the person will behave.The level of aggression in Dr.Fontenot's study is the ____ variable.

Dr.Zoeworks for a research foundation that focuses on epigenetics.Dr.Zoe's work most likely examines ____.

In Dr.Turgrove's experiment,he includes a control group that receives a placebo.This type of research design is meant to control which confound?

A researcher tests the influence of environment on cognitive development by taking newborn children away from their parents and assigning half of them to a rich cognitive environment and half to a deprived cognitive environment.Is there anything wrong with this experiment,and if so,what?

Quisley's hypothesis is that listening to classical music improves intellectual performance.He randomly divides a mathematics class into two rooms.In room A,music by Mozart plays softly in the background during a lecture.In room B,the students listen to a lecture without background music.The independent variable is ____.

Twenty volunteers are shown a movie about a party.After viewing,participants are asked to rate their reactions to the movie using a scale from 1 to 7.In this example,what would be the data?