Topic 2: Research Methods Flashcards
Maria wants to use the principles of empiricism to investigate whether alcohol consumption affects people’s sleeping patterns. What would. Maria be most likely to do?
Monitor people’s alcohol consumption and then observe their brain activity during sleep.
What methods would a psychologist not use to test their hypothesis?
Conduct background research.
Without mentioning that is he researching a psychology project, Ben takes notes about his family member’s behavior while they are eating dinner. What is Ben conducting?
Naturalistic observation.
A questionnaire is an example of what?
A self report method.
Yuan-Chun takes part in a study to test a new acne drug. Although she is part of the control group and has not been given the real drug, she believes that her skin is significantly improving. What is she experiencing?
The placebo effect.
True or false: Case studies can provide information that it would not be ethical to obtain using other methods.
True.
Which one of these has face validity?
a) a survey researching personality traits that asks a question about income level.
b) an experiment testing physical strength that involves lifting different objects.
b)
Krishna conducts an experiment to prove that reduced levels of sleep cause memory deficits. For three days, he keeps his participants awake until 3AM and wakes them up at 7AM. He then gives his participants a memory test. What is the independent variable in Krishna’s experiment?
The amount of sleep.
What would help control the effect of observer bias?
Blind observers.
To avoid potential bias in her study, Kim tells her participants that they will be taking part in an intelligence test. In actual fact, she is researching common interactions between strangers. What should Kim do to make sure that her experiment is ethical?
She should debrief the participants when they have completed the study.
What would not be true of surveys used to conduct research?
They allow researchers to draw conclusions about cause and effect relationships.
While analyzing two sets of data, Jin notices that people who eat carrots more than twice a week live longer than people who rarely eat the vegetables. Jin writes an article for his college newspaper with the headline “Eating carrots increases longevity.” What is wrong with his article headline?
A correlation link does not necessarily indicate cause and effect.
Malik makes sure that he uses a representative sample of population for his study. Because of this, his results will most likely have what?
External validity.
Researchers at a publicly funded institution who want to publish their work in a scientific journal must have what?
They must have their research proposal evaluated by an institutional review board.
You most frequently find yourself using the phrase, “I knew it all along.” What does this indicate?
Dogmatism.
