Exam 4: Fundamental Research Issues

Participant variables are also called _____ variables.

In the context of psychological research, the variable that is considered to be the cause is called the _____ variable.

Catherine, a researcher, desires to study child behavior with age, sex, and mental stability as constant variables. She uses level of activity as an independent variable for her study. In this context, Catherine is trying to establish _____.

In the context of research, _____ refers to "truth" and the accurate representation of information.

In the context of psychological research, the variable that is considered to be the effect is called the _____ variable.

Experimental control is accomplished by:

A researcher investigated the relationship between length of test and grades in a western civilization course. After randomly assigning students to groups, she found that students who took longer exams received better grades than students who took shorter exams. In this scenario, the independent variable is:

In a _____ method, relationships between variables are studied by making observations or measures of the variables of interest.

In the context of validity, when examining a single study, we find internal validity to be generally in conflict with _____ validity.

A researcher desires to study the relationship between stress and an employee's ability to perform at work. However, he finds that there is no direct relationship between the two. He also notices that presence of a supervisor in the environment is establishing a relationship between stress and employee's ability to perform. In this context, supervisor's presence is acting as a _____ variable.

Margaret, a researcher, desires to conduct a field experiment to determine the effects of a shopping mall's ambience on consumer purchase behavior. However, she has to deal with other influencing factors such as noise, crowd, and space distribution. She desires to avoid them by using randomization. In this context, noise, crowd, and space are _____ variables.

When a researcher presents a graph indicating the relationship between an independent and a dependent variable, the _____ variable should appear on the vertical axis.

In the context of different methods of study, identify the primary advantage of field experiments over laboratory experiments.

Which of the following statements is true of the nonexperimental method?

A _____ is any event, situation, behavior, or individual characteristic that changes.

An HR executive of a company studies the effect of size of project teams on the teams' performance. He found that team size was not associated with any particular change in performance. In the context of relationship between variables, what type of relationship exists between the size of project teams and their performance?

Which of the following is a disadvantage of using field experiments?

A researcher investigated the relationship between alcohol intake and reaction time using a driving simulation task. Participants drank either one ounce or three ounces of alcohol. Their reaction time was measured in terms of the speed with which they braked on seeing a red light during the simulated driving task. In this case, the dependent variable in the experiment is the _____.

_____ validity refers to one's ability to accurately draw conclusions about causal relationships.

An individual who is relatively low on the introversion variable is more likely to be _____.