PSY105 Tutorial 5

Prof. Kat from Cambridge University is planning to replicate a study that was done by Prof. Andi from Tokyo University that studied the effect of eye contact on social anxiety. The reason for this replication is to determine if the effect still exists across people of different cultures (individualistic vs. collectivistic).

In this case, Prof. Kat wants to ensure that this study has _____.

• Ecological validity

• Internal validity

• Population validity

• Temporal validity

Sam developed a scale to measure resilience and the items in the scale were found to measure resilience well.

In this sense, Sam’s scale has _____.

• High construct validity

• High internal validity

• High external validity

• None of the above

After studying all 2573 personality tests in the world, Sheena decides to develop her own personality test superior to all the others. She tests this by administering her test to a group of participants and calculated their average score. One month later, she administered the same scale again but realized that their average scores do not correlate significantly between the first administration and the second administration.

Sheena’s personality test is an example of _____.

• Low retest reliability

• High retest reliability

• Low internal consistency reliability

• High internal consistency reliability

Alex is conducting a research related to social psychology. In order to minimize threats to external validity in his research, he utilized a few approaches. Which of the following is/are possible approach(es) that Alex could have adopted?

I. Using inversely formulated questions

II. Aggregating the findings of related studies via a meta-analysis

III. Conducting the research under a strictly controlled environment

IV. Observing spontaneous behaviours of participants in natural surroundings

• I

• I, III

• II, IV

• III, IV

Mikayla is currently a participant in her friend’s thesis research on the effect of colour on aggression. Mikayla would like to help her friend achieve significant results. As such, Mikayla starts guessing what the hypothesis is and tries her best to answer the Aggression Questionnaire to match her friend's proposed hypothesis. Which threat to internal validity could the researcher be facing?

• Rosenthal effect

• Good-subject effect

• Response bias

• Hawthorne effect