Unit II Review

Which of the following best explains correlation?

• Describing how likely variable A is to cause variable B
• Describing how well variable A can be used to explain variable B
• Describing how closely variable A is related to variable B, and thus how likely it is variable A predicts variable B
• Describing how likely it is that variable B causes variable A 

Which of the following correlation coefficients (r) represents the strongest correlation?

• .7
• -.8
• .5
• -.4

True or False: Correlations can be positive or negative.

• True
• False

Which of the following is an example of a positive correlation?

• The more hours of sleep students get per night, the higher their overall GPA.
• The more hours of sleep students get, the less time they spend on their phones during the day.
• The more time students spend on their phone each day, the lower their overall GPA
• The more hours of sleep students get, the lower their overall GPA

Which of the following is an example of a negative correlation? 

• The more nachos I eat, the more I will weigh.
• The fewer nachos I eat, the less I will weigh.
• The more vegetables I eat, the less I will weigh.
• The more vegetables I eat, the more I will weigh.

Which descriptive statistic would a researcher use to describe how close a student’s SAT score is to a school’s average SAT score?

• Correlation Coefficient
• Mean
• Median
• Standard Deviation 

Which method should a psychology researcher use if she is interested in testing whether a specific reward in a classroom situation causes students to behave better?

• Case Study
• Experiment
• Naturalistic Observation
• Survey 

When a distribution of scores is skewed, which of the following is the most representative measure of central tendency?

• Inference
• Standard deviation
• Mean
• Median 

A researcher wants to conduct an experiment to determine if eating a cookie before class each day improves student grades. He uses two psychology classes for the experiment, providing daily cookies to one and nothing to the other. At the end of the semester, the researcher compares the final grades of students in the two classes. What is the independent variable for this experiment?

• The students in the class that received cookies
• The presence or absence of cookies
• Semester grades
• The period of the day the two classes meet

Which of the following represents naturalistic observation?

• Researchers watch and record how elementary school children interact on the playground.
• Researchers bring participants into a laboratory to see how they respond to a puzzle with no solution.
• A social worker visits a family home and gives feedback on family interactions.
• A principal looks at the relationship between the number of student absences and their grades.