VCE Psychology Key Science Skills

Which of the following would qualify as a within subjects design?

• Measuring amount of sleep pregnant mothers get before having a baby, and again, after they give birth

• Testing participants' IQ and levels of creativity in order to determine if there is a relationship between the two

• Measuring height of participants at the beginning of a study, then again after 10 years in order to determine average growth of adults per year

• Analysing the beliefs of individuals from Western and Eastern cultures by conducting a qualitative interview with one sample from each culture

Allocation involves

• Allocating a group of individuals to represent the population

• Selecting people from the population in a way that ensures that its strata (subgroups) are proportionally represented in the sample

• Assigning participants to experimental conditions

• Allocating the investigation methodology that will be used for the study

Which of the following is NOT true about ethics in research?

• The no-harm principles suggests that any unnecessary harm to participants should be avoided

• Ethical guidelines are broad moral principles that inform ethical concepts in research

• Participants are able to withdraw from the research at any point in the study, this includes their data also being removed

• The use of deception is permissible when participants knowledge of the true purpose of the study may affect their behaviours while participating

Which of the following statements regarding external validity is the most accurate?

• External validity is only considered when internal validity is achieved

• External validity is the extent to which an investigation truly measures what it claims to

• External validity is the extent to which the results of an experiment can be applied to different individuals in different settings

• External validity can be improved by using a stricter inclusion criteria

If a researcher wanted to report on the extent to which the participant's results differed from one another, what statistic would be most appropriate?

• The mean

• A bar chart

• The outliers

• Standard deviation

Operationalising variables for an experiment involves

• Strictly controlling all variables that can impact on the dependent variable

• Deciding on the importance of all the experimental variables

• Identifying all potential extraneous variables before the experiment is conducted

• Defining how the independent and dependent variables will be measured or manipulated

A researcher gives vitamin C to one group of research participants and a placebo to another group to measure the effect of vitamin C on the common cold. The frequency of colds is

• The independent variable

• The dependent variable

• An extraneous variable

• A confounding variable

Which of the following is most affected by extreme scores?

• Mean

• Median

• Mode

• Variability

The term___________ is used to describe how closely a set of measurement values agree with one another

• accuracy

• precision

• repeatability

• reproducibility

A researcher intentionally arranged the order in which conditions of a within-subjects experiment were experienced. This was done to control a practice effect that was epected to occur. This procedure is commonly called...

• manipulation

• control

• counter-balancing

• experimenter bias