Exam 7: The Experimental Research Strategy

A confounding variable is a variable that

Holding a specific variable constant guarantees that the variable cannot be a confounding variable.

Explain the difference between a no-treatment control group and a placebo control group.

An experiment includes a treatment condition,a no-treatment control,and a placebo control.Which two conditions should be compared to determine the size of the placebo effect?

A researcher intends to compare two different treatment conditions.Participants for the first treatment are selected and tested early in the school semester,and participants for the second treatment are selected and tested late in the semester.In this study,the time-of-testing represents a confounding variable.

Research results show that participants who shout their favorite curse words over and over can endure a painful stimulus longer than participants who shout a neutral word.For this study,the dependent variable is the amount of time that the pain is endured.

The manipulated variable in an experiment is the

In an experiment,participants are randomly assigned to treatment conditions

A researcher has observed that children who eat more sugar tend to show a higher level of activity than children who eat less sugar.However,the researcher suspects that the apparent relationship may be explained by the fact that some children have a higher rate of metabolism which causes them to eat more and to be more active compared to children with a lower rate of metabolism who eat less and are less active.This is an example of

Describe one situation where a manipulation check might be appropriate and explain what the manipulation check is intended to accomplish.

Describe and differentiate the three methods to control extraneous variables.

An experiment always involves comparing measurements obtained under one level of the independent variable with measurements obtained under another level of the independent variable.

In an experiment,the score for each participant is obtained by measuring the __________ variable.

An experiment must have at least two different levels for the independent variable.

Describe the directionality problem and explain how researchers attempt to avoid this problem in an experiment.

If a researcher were doing an experiment to determine whether eating protein causes a sad mood,measurements of mood would be the ________ variable.

For an experiment comparing two treatments,the researcher selects participants so that each treatment condition has 20 males and 10 females.For this study,what method is being used to control participant gender?

A researcher designs a study to determine whether female preschoolers prefer sweetened or unsweetened cereal.The researcher uses a box of sweetened colorful cereal and a box of unsweetened tan colored cereal.The research finds that the group of preschoolers ate more of the sweetened colorful cereal and therefore prefers the sweetened cereal.Which two variables are confounded in this experiment?

A researcher moves the real world into the laboratory.This type of research is called

Simulation and field studies are used to increase the external validity of experiments.