Exam 6: Causation and Experimental Design

It is never ethical to deceive subjects about an experiment.

In experiments, subjects are ideally assigned to control and experimental groups using simple random sampling.

To establish time order, which of the following must come first?

When parents are registering their children for kindergarten, they are given the opportunity to enroll their children in an experimental music program that researchers hope will improve overall learning. What experimental design is being used?

When a staff member explains to a subject why he or she has been deceived in an experiment, what is the staff doing?

In an experiment, the control group receives the experimental treatment.

Treatment misidentification can be limited by a double-blind procedure.

Rachel finds that higher salaries produce greater productivity in work environments with a great deal of creative flexibility, but have no effect in routine, unskilled work. What element of causality has she identified?

Before-and-after experimental designs lack control groups.

With experiments, researchers are concerned with whether the relationship between the treatment and the outcome variable holds true for certain subgroups.

In Sherman and Berk's (1984) study of the effect of arrest on future domestic violence, police officers determined which subjects would be arrested based on random selection, made while officers were responding to actual calls for domestic disturbances. Their study is a good example of:

When a researcher matches individual cases with similar individuals in a comparison group, the researcher is using which of the following methods?

Compare randomization and random sampling. What are their similarities and differences? In what way does each help to improve the validity of research conclusions? Why does the use of one of these techniques preclude the use of the other?

Which of the following includes several pretest and posttest observations, allowing the researcher to study the process by which an intervention or treatment has an impact over time?

A researcher is concerned that gender may affect how subjects respond to an experimental stimulus. So subjects are paired with another subject who has the same gender, and one member from each pair is assigned by a flip of a coin to the experimental group and one to the control group. This method of assigning subjects to groups is called:

Which of the following are particularly useful for studying the impact of new laws or social programs that affect large numbers of people?

The common feature of all before-and-after designs is:

The ex post facto control group design is a quasi-experimental design.

According to the requirement of time order in establishing a causal effect, the dependent variable must come before the independent variable.

After 30 years of teaching the same research methods course, Professor Zone's average exam scores increase because he doesn't want to spend the time arguing with students over borderline grades. This is an example of: