Exam 12: Quasi-Experiments and Small-N Designs

RESEARCH STUDY 12.2 Dr. LaGuardia is a cognitive neuroscientist who is interested in the effect of brain concussions on the ability to recognize faces. He conducts a quasi-experimental study in which he examines football players before and after the regular season, using the Benton Facial Recognition Test (a published, widely used measure of one's ability to recognize faces) to compare those who received concussions to those who did not. He finds that players who had concussions during the regular season performed worse on the Benton Facial Recognition Test than did players who did not experience concussions. -Refer to Research Study 12.2 above to answer the following question. Which of the following makes Dr.LaGuardia's quasi-experimental study different from a correlational study?

RESEARCH STUDY 12.1 Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). -Refer to Research Study 12.1 above to answer the following question. What would Dr.Fletcher need to do to his current study design to make it a nonequivalent groups interrupted time-series design?

According to the textbook,which of the following ethical questions might be posed specifically in reference to a reversal design?

RESEARCH QUESTION 12.4 Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness/ appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale, where higher scores indicate higher body concerns). -Refer to Research Study 12.4 above to answer the following question. Explain why Dr.Fletcher is conducting a quasi-experimental design rather than a true experiment.

A small-N design that involves providing treatment and then removing treatment is known as a/an:

RESEARCH STUDY 12.3 Dr. Anderson is a nutritionist who helps clients lose weight prior to surgery. She is working with a client (W. J.) who is a male planning on undergoing a heart transplant. He currently eats more than 3,500 calories a day and has been asked by his doctor to cut the number of calories to about 1,800 (400 for breakfast, 600 for lunch, and 800 for dinner). She is curious as to whether a food journal will help reduce the number of calories. A food journal is a book in which a person writes down everything he or she eats. She decides to phase in the food journal gradually, initially only being used at breakfast during the first three days after baseline (days 4-6). During days 7-9, the journal is used at lunch, too, and during days 10-12, it also is used during dinner. Each day, Dr. Anderson's client sends her the food journal and the number of calories he ate at each meal (as calculated by his wife, whose help she enlisted). The data for Dr. Anderson's study are below. -Refer to Research Study 12.3 above to answer the following question. In examining the external validity of her study,Dr.Anderson is probably most concerned about making sure her study generalizes to:

RESEARCH STUDY 12.1 Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). -Refer to Research Study 12.1 above to answer the following question. In addition to measuring the body concern of the participants who joined a fraternity/sorority both immediately before and immediately after they join,Dr.Fletcher measures them for the three weeks before and the three weeks after.This type of design is known as a/an:

Which of the following is true of the difference between large-N experiments and small-N experiments?

The degree to which a quasi-experiment supports a causal claim depends on which of the following:

RESEARCH STUDY 12.1 Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). -Refer to Research Study 12.1 above to answer the following question. If Dr.Fletcher is interested in a causal relationship between joining a fraternity/sorority and attractiveness/appearance concern,why doesn't he conduct a true experiment?