Discussing Research

A researcher does an experiment to see how people respond to an elderly person who is asking for help on public transportation.  In some cases she is dressed very fashionably; in a second condition, she is dressed in a tattered old dress.  Which type of experiment is this?

• A field experiment

• A longitudinal experiment

• A natural experiment

• A quasi-experiment

A researcher wants to see the effect of stress on the health of teachers in an IB school.  Blood pressure and t-cell cell count are measured when they are hired.  They are also interviewed about their level of stress and fill in a checklist survey regarding their health. Every year thereafter, the researchers carry out these blood tests to measure the long-term effects of stress and carry out interviews to discuss work stress and their health over the past school year.   What type of study is this?

• A cross-sectional, prospective case study.

• A longitudinal, retrospective case study.

• A longitudinal, prospective case study.

• A cross-sectional, retrospective case study.

A study is carried out at your school to see how the winter weather affects the moods of students.  On a dreary day in winter, students in each grade are given a test of their mood.   In the spring, the test is given again. In both cases the names of the students are not collected - they are simply asked to indicate their gender on the top of the test.   Which of the following best describes this study?

• A repeated measures experiment.

• A longitudinal case study.

• A correlational study. 

• A cross-sectional survey.

Which of the following is not a problem with retrospective studies?

• They may be influenced by misremembering the past (memory distortion)

• Data from the past may not be verified.

• Participants may have a bias about their perception of past events.

• They are highly time-consuming.

What is meant by the sentence "There was an inverse correlation between the amount of time the students studied and their scores on the exam?"

• Some students did better and some did worse when they studied a lot - so it comes down to participant variables.

• The more that students studied, the worse they did on the exam.

• There is no relationship between the amount of time a student studies and exam success.

• The less that students studied, the worse they did on the exam.

If extraneous (confounding) variables are not well controlled, this may affect

• Ecological validity

• Population validity

• Internal validity

• Construct validity

If an experimental situation is too artificial, psychologists say that it lacks

• Predictive validity

• Internal validity

• Mundane realism

• External validity

Which of the following is important if researchers hope to determine the reliability of their findings?

• the results must predict what will happen in a real-life situation.

• The sample must be stratified.

• the procedure must be highly standardized.

• All confounding (extraneous) variables must be controlled.