Research Methods Practice Part 2

The football team's punter wants to determine how consistent his punting distances have been during the past season. He should compute the: 

• mean

• median

• mode

• standard deviation

 A researcher looking for gender differences in 3-year- olds observes a preschool class and records how many minutes children of each gender play with dolls. She then compares the two sets of numbers. What type of descriptive research is she conducting?

• Case Study

• National Study

• Random Sample Method

• Naturalistic Obervation

. Which of the following questions is best investigated by means of a survey?

• Is IQ related to grades?

• Does extra sleep improve memory?

• What is the best study technique for AP tests?

• Are students more likely to be politically liberal or conservative?

A person displays a set of rare behaviors that psychologists had not known about previously, because nobody had ever shown them before. The best strategy to investigate the nature of those behaviors is

• Survey

• Interview

• Case Study

• Correlation Method

 Which of the following is most important when conducting survey research?

• Choosing a representative sample

• Choosing a large sample

• Choosing a biased sample

• Choosing a sample whose answers will likely support your hypothesis

 The purpose of random assignment is to

• allow participants in both the experimental and control groups to be exposed to the independent variable.

• eliminate the placebo effect. 

• reduce potential confounding variables.

• generate operational definitions for the independent and dependent variables.

Which of the following is a measure of variation?

• Range

• Mode

• Frequency

• Median

Which statistical measure of central tendency is most affected by extreme scores?

• Median

• Mode

• Mean

• Correlation

What must a researcher do to fulfill the ethical principle

of informed consent?

• Keep information about participants confidential.

• Allow participants to choose whether to take part.

• Protect participants from potential harm.

• Provide participants with a post-experimental

  explanation of the study.

Which ethical principle requires that at the end of the study participants be told about the true purpose of the research?

• Institutional Review Board approval

• Confidentiality

• Debriefing

• Protection from physical harm