Question 1

Researchers conducted a study on "inattentional blindness" in the central gathering plaza of a university campus to determine whether individuals would notice unusual events.For half of the observation periods,a clown rode a unicycle in the plaza; in the other half of the observation periods,two costumed confederates acted a scene from Hamlet.Trained research assistants asked individuals who had walked through the plaza if they had noticed anything unusual.What type of observational study does this study represent?

Accepted Answer

A)  field experiment 
B)  structured observation 
C)  naturalistic observation 
D)  reactive observation

Question 2

In order to avoid the problem of ______,it is sometimes necessary to use ______.

Accepted Answer

A)  reactivity; unobtrusive observation 
B)  observer bias; "blind" subjects 
C)  demand characteristics; "blind" observers 
D)  all of these

Question 3

The problem of reactive measurement is _________ when indirect (unobtrusive)observation is used.

Accepted Answer

A)  eliminated 
B)  unchanged 
C)  decreased 
D)  increased

Question 4

The cues and other information used by participants to guide their behavior in a psychological study are called

Accepted Answer

A)  sensitization factors. 
B)  intra-experimental cues. 
C)  demand characteristics. 
D)  experimenter expectancies.

Question 5

Which of the following would be an example of coding a narrative record during the process of data reduction in qualitative data analysis?

Accepted Answer

A)  calculating interobserver reliability 
B)  classifying behaviors from an observation record into different categories 
C)  displaying the data using a graph or a chart 
D)  obtaining a mean number of behaviors after classifying the behaviors into categories

Question 6

Two types of archival records are

Accepted Answer

A)  running records and episodic records. 
B)  natural-use records and controlled-use records. 
C)  selective-deposit records and selective-survival records. 
D)  none of these

Question 7

Students conducted a naturalistic observation to study whether people arriving at the library alone would be more likely to hold the door open for a person coming in immediately after them than would people who arrived in pairs.The students made their observations looking through the window of a classroom building across from the library.They chose this position for observation to avoid the potential problem of

Accepted Answer

A)  demand characteristics. 
B)  observer bias. 
C)  nonrepresentative sampling. 
D)  reactivity.

Question 8

A researcher observes that the frequency of traffic accidents increases in warmer weather.This researcher need to consider whether there are more cars on the road when it is warmer.This "number of cars" variable must be considered to determine if the relationship between traffic accidents and temperature is

Accepted Answer

A)  due to selective survival. 
B)  spurious. 
C)  a causal relationship. 
D)  due to physical traces.

Question 9

Clinical psychologists who make behavioral assessments of parent-child interactions are likely making use of an observation technique called

Accepted Answer

A)  low-intervention observation. 
B)  quasi-controlled observation. 
C)  structured observation. 
D)  disguised participant observation.

Question 10

The remnants,fragments,and products of past behavior that provide unobtrusive measures of behavior are called

Accepted Answer

A)  subtle traces. 
B)  archival records. 
C)  physical traces. 
D)  anecdotal evidence.

Question 11

Which of the following is the most likely reason that a researcher studying aggressiveness of children would choose to use naturalistic observation?

Accepted Answer

A)  Naturalistic observation would allow for the most precise operational definition of aggressiveness and thus the highest degree of internal validity. 
B)  Naturalistic observation would allow for the greatest control over the setting in which the observations were made. 
C)  Naturalistic observation is the preferred method when moral and ethical limitations apply to the topic under investigation. 
D)  Naturalistic observation is the preferred method when systematic manipulation of independent variables is required.

Question 12

Researchers studying factors that influence how much people eat gave college students potato chips to eat while watching a movie.The potato chips were stacked in tubes.In some of the tubes,researchers inserted colored chips at regular intervals (e.g.,every 7th chip).Other tubes contained no colored chips.In this study,the use of potato chip stacks with colored chips represents

Accepted Answer

A)  disguised observation. 
B)  a controlled-use trace. 
C)  a natural-use trace. 
D)  a product.

Question 13

Researchers planned a long-term study of children's relationships with their parent using observations in the homes of the families.Before beginning to collect data,the observers visited each home a few times and set up their recording equipment and recorded behavior just as they would do in the data collection phase of their study.These early visits to the home were done so that families would get used to the presence of observers.Which of the following techniques did these researchers use?

Accepted Answer

A)  disguised observation 
B)  accommodation 
C)  habituation 
D)  interobserver reliability

Question 14

A researcher studying interpersonal communication measured the time that couples made eye contact during a conversation.Which descriptive statistics would most commonly be used describe the researcher's duration measurements?

Accepted Answer

A)  mean and standard deviation 
B)  median and difference scores 
C)  mode and correlation 
D)  proportion and percentage

Question 15

A researcher examines the number of "family-size" products on supermarket shelves in America and France,and concludes that Americans prefer larger-sized portions than do the French.A second researcher concludes that the number of members in a typical family is larger in American than in France.These different interpretations indicate that

Accepted Answer

A)  both researchers are wrong. 
B)  the researchers are making inferences about controlled-use traces. 
C)  the validity of unobtrusive measures must be examined carefully. 
D)  time sampling should have been used.

Question 16

Two student researchers wish to determine the degree of interobserver reliability they achieved in their study.They observed individual students who were approaching another person on a campus path.The two observers both independently recorded whether or not each observed student greeted the other person.Which of the following measures should the student researchers use to assess interobserver reliability?

Accepted Answer

A)  Pearson Product-Moment correlation 
B)  Spearman's rank-order correlation 
C)  interobserver coding measure 
D)  percentage agreement measure

Question 17

When a more or less faithful reproduction of behavior as it originally occurred is recorded in either written form or through the use of audio or video recording,the resulting description of behavior in an observation study is called a

Accepted Answer

A)  physical trace. 
B)  data transcript. 
C)  complete file. 
D)  narrative record.

Question 18

Which of the following dependent variables is most likely to represent a ratio scale of measurement?

Accepted Answer

A)  duration of eye contact 
B)  rank ordering of amount of eye contact 
C)  occurrence of eye contact (present/absent) 
D)  observers' ratings of the intimacy of eye contact

Question 19

When many observations of the same children in a classroom are made it is possible to determine the frequency of certain behaviors,such as how many times children speak in class.Which scale of measurement do these frequency data represent?

Accepted Answer

A)  nominal 
B)  ordinal 
C)  interval 
D)  ratio

Question 20

Describe three problems and limitations that can occur when archival records are used in research,and how these problems affect researchers' conclusions about evidence from archival records.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Describe three problems and limitations that can...

Exam 4: Observation

In order to avoid the problem of ,it is sometimes necessary to use .

The problem of reactive measurement is _________ when indirect (unobtrusive) observation is used.