Exam 2: D: Research Methods

Case studies can be helpful in providing __________,or demonstrations that a given psychological phenomenon can occur.

If you are interested in examining the relationship between the number of class days missed and one's subsequent semester grade point average,you would be best served to use a(n)__________ to study this question.

Which measure of dispersion uses all the available data?

According to the text,many people believe that there are strong correlations between the full moon and strange behaviour,such as violent crime,suicides,psychiatric admissions,and births (otherwise known as the lunar lunacy effect).This is an example of

Tanya is a therapist who sells subliminal message tapes to help people stop smoking.She designs a study where one group gets the subliminal messages on their tapes and the other group does not.She finds that both groups had about an equal success rate in quitting smoking after treatment.Which of the following explains her results?

Nadia's psychology professor gave her class a data set and asked the class to compute the measures of central tendency for the data.The type of problems Nadia's class are trying to solve require what mode of thinking?

If there is no discernible relationship between scores on students' homework assignments and their exam scores in an introductory biology class,we would say that a(n)__________ correlation exists.

If I wanted to determine,on average,how far apart any one score is from another,I should use a measure of

There is an illusory correlation between psychiatric hospital admissions and the full moon.According to the Great Fourfold Table of Life,which of the following experiences do we pay too much attention to?

Which of the following is correct in distinguishing between random selection and random assignment?

Who was responsible for one of the first historical tests of what later became known as the placebo effect?

The major advantage of self-report measures,like surveys,is that they

A medical doctor believes that the presence of aromatherapy will reduce the anxiety of first-time mothers-to-be during labour and will increase their reported satisfaction with their care at his hospital.He randomly assigns mothers to give birth in a room either with or without aromatherapy.What is the independent variable in this example?

This research design examines one person or a small number of people in depth,often over an extended time period.

Most people in general are quite happy,but there are some instances of mild depression,fewer cases of moderate depression,and even fewer cases of severe depression.What could you say about the distribution of depression in the general population?

It may be difficult to test hypotheses in the area of dissociative identity (multiple personality)disorder,because it is an especially rare disorder.Which research design would be most useful in these circumstances?

Pretend that you are a peer reviewer for a study on exposure therapy and arachnophobia (fear of spiders).The researcher chooses a group of patients who he thinks can handle the treatment (administered by a colleague)and has another group of patients as a control that he talks to about their fears weekly.He reports that,following exposure therapy,those in the experimental group showed less fear of spiders than those in the control group.As a reviewer,what is the hidden flaw with this study that limits its claims?

Joe swerves his car to avoid hitting a pot hole.Randall tries to figure out how to apply a concept he learned in class to real life.Based on the discussion of the modes of thinking in your text,Joe is relying on __________ and Randall is relying on __________.

Roy has taken time off his job in a sandwich factory due to psychological reasons and is trying to claim workers compensation to cover his expenses.He claims that he has developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)as a result of witnessing a co-worker severely cut themselves on a meat slicer,but he really just wants a break from working and has not been traumatized.Roy is likely to engage in __________ to make himself appear like he is more psychologically disturbed that he really is.

A British literature instructor examines the number of class periods his students have missed by mid-terms and has the following data: 1,0,10,0,2,1,0,0,5,2,3,0,0,0,1,1,2,3,1.What is the median for this data set?