Midterm

Question 1

Operational Definition_1

Answer 1

Defines something (e.g. a variable, term, or object) in terms of the specific process or set of validation tests used to determine its presence and quantity.

Question 2

Operational Definition_2

Answer 2

Operational definitions are also known as indicators, they help social scientists continue to move from a broad but somewhat refined conceptual definition, to a more specific definition that they will use to form their research question.

Question 3

Conceptual Definition

Answer 3

a working definition a researcher uses as a concept.

Question 4

Elements of a good research question

Answer 4

Should be the result of an observation, not an ethical/procedural question. Should identify variables and the relationship and/or difference. Cause & effect

Question 5

How to identify a bad research question?

Answer 5

Vague constructions or broad definitions. It is difficult to identify the variables and/or the relationship.It comments about the topic and or the variables.Value questions not observable. General topics. Provides some opinion/judgement about the topic,

Question 6

What is the purpose of the IRB?

Answer 6

International review boards are responsible for making sure that the benefits to society outweighs any potential costs to participants and that the procedures used in the research methodology include adequate safeguards to protect the identity, safety and general well being of the participants.

Question 7

Which are the ethical research principles contained in the Belmont Report?

Answer 7

a) Respect for the person: recognizes that people are autonomous individuals and have the right to make decisions for themselves. If those individuals cannot make informed consent, they are entitled to be protected and it is the researcher obligation to ensure they are protected.
b) Principle of beneficence: ensures the research does not harm the participants and the researcher works to maximize the social, individual and/or scientific benefits of the research wile minimizing any potential harm.
c) Principle of justice: the benefits or burdens of the research are distributed equally among the selection of subjects.

Question 8

How Deduct Reasoning works?

Answer 8

Works from general to specific. Formally it starts from a theory, generates hypothesis, observes reality against the hypothesis, performs observation and develops conclusions that will enrich the theory.

Question 9

How Induct Reasoning works?

Answer 9

From specific to general. Starts from an Observation. It generates a Hypothesis as explanation of the observation. Created a Theory

Question 10

What is an (IV) Independent Variable?

Answer 10

Variable manipulate by the researcher.Variable that is producing the change in the dependent variable – the cause. Experimental research – researcher can manipulate this variable- e.g control groups/placebo. Non-experimental research – interest on IV but cannot be manipulated.

Question 11

What is a (DV) Dependent Variable?

Answer 11

Variable experimenting the effect of the IV manipulation. Outcome the researcher is interested to study – the effect. Whatever is measure by the operational definition.

Question 12

What is a (EV) extraneous Variable?

Answer 12

Variables that affect the relationship in the variables under study.All variables that may affect the results.

Question 13

Describe Descriptive Statistics

Answer 13

Univariate statistics – statistics that summarize a sample or population one variable at a time. The technique produces measures of central tendency and dispersion which represents how the values of the variables in the sample or population. Summarizing the sample of the scores you have actually measured. Only refer to sample statistics.

Question 14

Describe Inferential Statistics

Answer 14

Generalizes the statistics obtained from a sample to the general population to which the sample belongs. The measures of the population are termed as parameters. There is always some uncertainty compared to the real values of the population. You are suing the statistics of the sample to infer (assume) or estimate the corresponding population parameters. Generalizing about the population of interest.

Question 15

What is Experimental research?

Answer 15

Variable control and manipulation of the IV and extraneous variables. What cannot be controlled, can be randomize. Group assignment Time order: pre-test and post-test.

Question 16

What is Non-Experimental research?

Answer 16

Simple measurement, no variable manipulation. Some statistical controls involved.

Question 17

Characteristics all measurements

Answer 17

exhaustive and mutually exclusive

Question 18

What exhaustive means in a measurement characteristic?

Answer 18

There is an answer for every possible characteristic of the variable.

Question 19

What mutually exclusive means in a measurement characteristic?

Answer 19

There is only one answer per people (measurement)

Question 20

What are the characteristics of the nominal measurements?

Answer 20

Exhaustive and Mutually Exclusive

Question 21

What are the characteristics of the ordinal measurements?

Answer 21

Exhaustive + Mutually exclusive + Ranked. Attributes or values can be logically ranked.

Question 22

Example of nominal measurements

Answer 22

Gender, yes/no question, sport list (football, basketball, soccer, gold, swimming, other).

Question 23

Example of ordinal measurements

Answer 23

Likert scale: always/often/usually/seldom/never. Salary brackets.

Question 24

What are the characteristics of the Interval measurements?

Answer 24

Exhaustive + Mutually exclusive + Ranked + Intervals that have fixed quantifiable meaningful distances between them. Imply scale creation or index and a ranking question.

Question 25

Example of interval measurements

Answer 25

IQ normally ranked between 50-150. In this case there is no real value for zero

Question 26

What are the characteristics of the Ratio measurements?

Answer 26

Exhaustive + Mutually exclusive + Ranked + Intervals that have fixed quantifiable meaningful distances between them + have a true zero point! Zero is meaningful and real.

Question 27

Example of ratio measurements

Answer 27

number of welfare payments received? 0 (zero) means never received a welfare payment. Years of education, years of experience, drinks a week.

Question 28

Mean definition

Answer 28

Arithmetic average. Sum of the measurements (set) divided by the number of measurements.

Question 29

Median definition

Answer 29

It’s the value in the middle of the range of the sample/population. The number or score that divides the distribution into equal halves. 50th percentile. Must first rank the order of scores.

Question 30

Mode definition

Answer 30

It is the most frequently occurring score in a distribution.

Question 31

In a normal distribution, what is the relationship between the mean, mode and median?

Answer 31

They are the same mean=mode=median

Question 32

List reason for a skewed (not normal) distribution

Answer 32

Extreme values or outliers
Overlap of two or more processes
Insufficient date discrimination
Sorted data
Sorted bottle volume data
Data follows a different distribution

Question 33

What is the formula for the deviation scores?

Answer 33

X (measurement) – M (mean)

Question 34

Definition of variance

Answer 34

A single number that represents the total amount of variation in a distribution. Is the mean of the sum of all the squared deviation scores (sum of squares).

S^2 = Σ (Xi – M)^2 / N (or N-1…we’re using N-1)

Question 35

Definition of the standard deviation SD

Answer 35

(represented by the Greek letter sigma, σ) – is a measure that is used to quantify the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values.
SD = √s^2

Question 36

In a normal distribution, how much (%) of the measurements are included at +- 1 σ (standard deviation) from the mean?

Answer 36

68.2% of the measurements fall into plus or minus 1 standard deviation from the mean.

Question 37

What is a z-score?

Answer 37

Z-scores convert raw scores into a standardize measure which allows for the comparison across distributions. Where the score falls relative to the mean.Z-scores tells in std dv units, how far the mean of the distribution score falls.

Question 38

How do you calculate a z-score?

Answer 38

A z-score (aka, a standard score) indicates how many standard deviations an element is from the mean. A z-score can be calculated from the following formula.
z = (X - μ) / σ
where z is the z-score, X is the value of the element, μ is the population mean, and σ is the standard deviation.

Question 39

What is statistical significance?

Answer 39

Also known as statistically significant result, is attained when a p-value is less than the significance level.

Question 40

Significance level definition

Answer 40

Significance level is the degree of probability of error we accept in a test

Question 41

What means that a result was statistically significant?

Answer 41

What is the probability that what we think is a relationship between two variables is really just a chance occurrence?
The null hypothesis is rejected if the p-value is less than the significance or α level. The α level is the probability, p value, of rejecting the null hypothesis given that it is true (type I error) and is most often set at 0.05 (5%).
5% (or less) doubt/uncertainty in the results or we are 95% confidence about the results.

Question 42

Difference between random sampling and random assignment

Answer 42

Random sampling is the aleatory selection of measurements/items/people from a population. Random assignment is the creation of groups in our sample

Question 43

Main Properties of a normal distribution

Answer 43

1. It is bell shaped. When approaching the axis, it is extreme but it never touches it.
2. It is symmetrical around the mean of the distribution
3. If a set of observations are normally distributed, then mean-median and mode are the same.
4. The normal curve can be specified completely once the mean and the standard deviation are knowen
5. The area underneath the curve is directly proportional to the relative frequency of observations.

Question 44

What is the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics?

Answer 44

Descriptive statistics enable us to summarize the essential characteristics of a group of scores. Inferential statistics enable us to infer, with some degree of error, the characteristics of the population from a sample.

Question 45

Define Random sampling method

Answer 45

The sampling is the method that enable us to approximate the selection of a representing sample.

Question 46

Define sampling distribution

Answer 46

Enables us to handle the error that is inevitably made when inferring a population from a sample

Question 47

Define random sample

Answer 47

a sample in which every member of the population has equal likelihood of being included. Events are independent.

Question 48

Define random sampling without replacement

Answer 48

Once chosen, score, event or participant cannot be returned to the population to be selected again.

Question 49

Define random sampling with replacement

Answer 49

Once chosen, score, event or participant can be returned to the population to be selected again.

Question 50

Why random sampling without replacement is preferred in behavioral sciences?

Answer 50

Because we do not want the same person to appear more than once in a group.

Question 51

As the size of the sample increases, the sample mean resembles more the population mean and the error ….

Answer 51

in estimating the population mean from the sample mean become ls less.

Question 52

Central Limit Theorem

Answer 52

Approximation to normal becomes increasingly closer as the sample size increases.

Question 53

Another way to say “our results are significant at p is ….

Answer 53

“we are 95% confidence in generalizing these results to the population”