Exam 2: How Psychologists Do Research

The principal reason that researchers use the experimental method is to:

When Hoshi asks about the test she is taking, she is told that the achievement test does use established standards of performance. Hoshi's question was about the test's:

A test would be the most appropriate method to investigate which of these topics?

A correlation coefficient of -1.73 means that:

The president of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) is concerned after reading that during puberty children have increased needs for sleep. She wants to find out if other parents of middle-school children would support a later starting time for school. At one of the Tuesday night meetings, she conducts a survey of the PTA members in order to address this question. When she asks those parents in support of the change to raise their hands, she discovers that 85% of the parents support a later starting time. What information has she gained by conducting this survey? What shortcomings exist in her survey?

When two variables are not related, the correlation coefficient will be close to:

In a single-blind experiment, subjects do not know if they are in an experimental group or a control group.

Think of a topic in psychology (from Chapter 1, from your own experience, or from the media) that interests you. Write a hypothesis regarding this topic and explain what research method you would use in order to investigate the topic.

The arithmetic mean is a commonly used measure of variability.

A group of subjects, randomly selected from the population of interest, which matches the population on important characteristics such as age and sex is called:

When two variables have a strong negative correlation, the correlation coefficient will be close to:

Which of the following methods would be most appropriate to study maternal behaviour in chimpanzees?

In a double-blind experiment:

The purpose of a single-blind or double-blind study is to:

The usual procedure for developing norms is to give the test to a large group of people who resemble those for whom the test is intended.

Psychologists consider a result to be significant if it would be expected to occur by chance ________ time(s) in 100 repetitions of the study.

The number of storks nesting in some European villages is positively correlated with the number of human births in the villages. This means that:

Match these descriptions with the appropriate term. -A variable that an experimenter manipulates.

In the 1970s, a 13-year-old girl was found locked up in a room, strapped to a potty chair. Since she had grown up in a world without human speech, researchers studied Genie's ability to acquire words, grammar, and pronunciation. This type of research is called a:

Observational studies are more useful for describing behaviour than for explaining behaviour.