Worksheets2019 AP Psych Research Exam Review
Total questions: 25
Worksheet time: 18mins
Psychologists generally prefer the experimental method to other research methods bc
experiments are more likely to support psychologists hypotheses
experiments can show cause effect relationships
it is easier to obtain a random sample for an experiment
experiments are more likely to result in statistically significant findings.
Theoretically, random assignment should eliminate
sampling error
need to use statistics
concerns over validity
many confounding variables
Charlotte and Tina are lab partners assigned to research who is friendlier, girls or boys. After conversing with their first 10 participants, they find that their friendliness ratings often differ. With which of the following should they be most concerned?
reliability
confounding variables
ethics
validity
Which of the following hypotheses would be most difficult to test experimentally?
People exposed to the color red will be more aggressive than those exposed to the color blue.
Divorce makes children more independent.
Exposure to violent TV increases aggression
Studying leads to better grades
Professor Matt wants to design a project studying emotional response to date rape. He advertises for participants in the school newspaper, informs them about the nature of the study, gets their consent, conducts an interview, and debriefs them about the results when the experiment is over. If you were on the IRB, with ethical consideration would you most likely have the most concern about in the study?
deception
confounding variables
confidentiality
coercion
Some psychologists consider Stanley Milgram's obedience studies to be unethical bc of which ethical consideration?
improper sampling procedure
risk of long term harm
clear scientific purpose
debriefing
One of the principal differences between the ethical guidelines for human and animal research is
Animals can be placed at much greater physical risk than human participants can
Human participants can be deceived for experimental purposes and animals can not.
Human participants must be chosen much more carefully than animals subjects
Environmental conditions for human studies must be monitored much more closely than they are in an animal study.
What is the median of the following distribution: 6,2,9,4,7,3
4
5
6
7
Emma scores a perfect 100 on a test that everyone else fails. If we were to graph this distribution, it would be
symmetrical
positively skewed
negatively skewed
straight line
Joe hypothesizes that a new drug he has just invented will enhance mice's memories. He feeds the drug to experimental group and gives the control group a placebo. He then times the mice as they learn to run through a maze. In order to know whether his hypothesis has been supported, Joe would need to use
inferential statistics
scatter plott
descriptive statistics
histograms
Which of the following is an example of random sampling?
I. Picking out of a hat to assign each of 3 classes to an experimental condition
II. Having a computer generate a random list of 100 high school students
III. Approaching any 50 students during 6th pd lunch
I only
II only
III only
I and II
Vince conducts an experiment to see whether fear makes mice run through mazes faster. He first selected a sample of 60 mice and then divided them into a control group and an experiment group. Which cannot be a confounding variable/
how fast the mice are at the start
when the mice run the maze
the population from which he selected his subjects
where the mice run the maze
Ollie, a nursery school student, hypothesizes that boys have fights with the finger paints more than girls do. She tests her hypothesis by casually watching the finger painting table for 3 days of nursery school. What method is she using?
informal survey
case study
naturalistic observation
ethnography
Tammy collects survey data that indicate that students who spend more time preparing for the AP test tend to score better than other students. Tammy can now conclude that
studying improves exam grades
a relationship exists between studying and exam grades
a significant correlation exists between studying and exam grades
anyone who does not study will do poorly on the exam
A student is interested in knowing how widely the academic aptitude of college bound students varies at her school. Which of the following statistical methods should she use to determine how much students SAT scores vary from the school's average SAT score?
correlation coefficient
Mean
Median
Standard Deviation
Which method should a psychology researcher use if she is interested in testing whether a specific reward in a classroom situation causes students to behave better?
Case study
Experiment
Survey
Naturalistic Observation
In a perfectly normal distribution of scores, which of the following statements is true?
a mean, median, and mode are all the same number
the mode is equal to the standard deviation
The scores are positively correlated
The mean minus the mode equals the median
Which of the following describes the placebo effect?
Students in art class are not told that their work will be evaluated for a scholarship
Participants in an experiment do not know if they are in the experimental or control group
Participants in a drug study are given an inert pill instead of the drug and behave as though they were given the drug.
Experimenters manipulate one variable in a study but not any others.
Which of the following represents naturalistic observation?
Researchers go to the mall and distribute surveys about the stores in the mall.
Researchers bring participants into a laboratory to see how they respond to a puzzle with no solution
A principal looks at the relationship between the number of student absences and their grades.
Researchers observe students seating patterns in the cafeteria.
Monday morning quarterbacks rarely act surprised about the outcome of weekend football games. This tendency to believe they knew how the game would turn out is best explained by which psychological principle?
Overconfidence
Hindsight Bias
Illusory Correlation
Random Sampling
Researchers studying gender have found that
there are more similarities than differences between the genders.
there are no significant cognitive differences between the genders.
There are no significant emotional differences between genders
difference between the genders are becoming more pronounced over time.
A journalism student is writing an article about her school's new cell phone policy, and she'd like to interview a random sample of students. Which of the following is the best example of a random sample?
The writer arrives at school early and interviews the first five students who come through the main entrance.
The writer pulls the names of five students from a hat that contains all students' names. She interviews the 5 selected students.
The writer asks her teacher if she can distribute a brief survey to the students in her AP Psychology class.
The writer passes out brief surveys to 50 students in the hall and uses the 18 surveys returned to her as the basis of her article.
Which of the following is a positive correlation?
As study time increases, students achieve lower grades
As levels of self esteem decline, levels of depression increases
People who exercise regularly are more likely to be overweight
Gas mileage decreases as vehicle weight increases.
Why is random assignment of participants to groups an important aspect of a properly designed experiment?
If the participants are randomly assigned the researcher can assume that the people in each group are similar.
By randomly assigning participants, the researcher knows that whatever is learned from the experiment will also be true for the population from which the participants were selected.
Random assignments keep expectations from influencing the results of the experiment.
If participants are not randomly assigned, it is impossible to replicate the experiment.
Which of th following is a potential problem with case study?
They provide too much detail, and the researcher is likely to lose track of the most important facts.
They are generally too expensive to be feasible.
The information learned may not apply to the wider population
They are technically difficult and most researchers don't have the skills to do to them properly.
