AP Psychology Research Methods

This technique gathers self-reported attitudes or behaviors of people by questioning them randomly and representatively.

• Experiment

• Case Study

• Survey

• Exploratory study

If a researcher is studying different approaches to dieting to determine which is the most effective for weight loss, the experimenter's manipulation of dieting is the:

• Control condition

• Independent variable

• Dependent variable

• Placebo

If you choose a sample of the population that gives each person an equal chance of participating, this would be:

• A biased sample

• A random sample

• An optimal sample

• An atypical sample

This is an observation technique in which one person is studied in depth.

• Survey

• Case Study

• Exploratory study

• Experiment

A researcher is interested in determining if infant crying and caretaker responses are different in developed and developing nations. She trains her research assistants to watch and record babies' behaviors in 3-minute increments, including variations in crying (e.g., whimpering, pain cries, etc.), as well as caregiver responses (e.g., holding, speaking, etc.). She then chooses 50 participants in four different countries to be included in her study. What type of research design is she using?

• Naturalistic observation

• Case study

• Survey research

• Correlation

A researcher wants to determine if a new regime of yoga and vitamin A will improve test-taking skills in college students. To ensure that participants in the experimental condition (i.e., those who will do yoga and receive Vitamin A) are very similar to participants in the control condition (i.e., those who will be on a waiting list, thus receiving no treatment), the researcher should:

• Randomly assign the participants to the conditions.

• Choose the first people who signed up for the study to be in the control condition.

• Ask for volunteers from a local yoga school.

• Let the participants choose whether they want to be in the experimental or control condition.

Professor Garcia would like to study parental spanking and aggressive behavior in children. Which of the following research methods would NOT be feasible due to ethical problems associated with trying to manipulate the spanking variable?

• Naturalistic observation

• Case study

• Experimental method

• correlational study

In order to control for experimenter bias as well as extraneous variables such as severity of condition, attitudes, age, etc., researchers assign subjects to groups by:

• Random assignment

• Replication

• Naturalistic observation

• Operational definitions

When conducting an experiment, it is not only important to manipulate the factors of interest. Researchers must also make sure to:

• Include only males or females in their samples.

• Hold constant or control other factors.

• Vary the time of day the participants are tested.

• Include case study examples in their samples.

In an experiment the ____ group is NOT exposed to the independent variable.

• experimental
• control
• double blind
• single blind