simons questions

Question 1 of 30

1

Which of the following is a true experiment?

Select one of the following:

University grades of students are correlated with their happiness levels
The happiness of Psyc344 before and after being fed chocolate is measured to see what effect chocolate has on people's moods.
The happiness of christchurch people over the period 2005 to 2015 is surveyed every year to see the effect of the christchurch earthquakes
An earthquake researcher compares the happiness of those living in the east and west of the city ( using Colombo St as the dividing line)

Explanation

Question 2 of 30

1

After reading up on his biochemistry, Dr. Vapid thinks that vitamin P might be an effective treatment for schizophrenia. He recruits 124 carefully diagnosed schizophrenics and divides them into two groups. Group A receives a tablet containing 3.7 micrograms of Vitamin P every day and Group B receives a similar appearing placebo. The people who distribute the tablets do not know which is the placebo and which is the Vitamin P. After a fortnight, all the patients are evaluated on a battery of clinical tests. The results show no significant differences on any test between the two groups. Dr Vapid concludes that Vitamin P has no value for treating schizophrenia.
What MAJOR problem do you see what this conclusion?

Select one of the following:

no real problem at all. This is a trick question.
He should have a control group of normal respondents
The sample is not large enough
Maybe the dosage level was too small for any effect to be noticeable.

Explanation

Question 3 of 30

1

Dr Zapp and her co-workers observe primary school children in seventeen randomly chosen New Zealand playgrounds. A year's intensive and reliable observation reveals that boys attack boys (defined as the clenched fist of a boy A coming into contact with boy B) significantly more often than girls attack girls. Dr Zapp concludes that New Zealand primary schoolboys are more aggressive than New Zealand schoolgirls.
What MAJOR problem do you see with this conclusion?

Select one of the following:

No real problem at all. This is a trick question
The definition of aggression is probably too narrow
Maybe the co-workers are working to different definitions of aggression
She should be looking at what the children do in the classrooms

Explanation

Question 4 of 30

1

In 1976, Ulric Neisser claimed that cognitive psychology at that time had failed to address the everyday aspects and function of human behaviour, and he blamed this failure on the excessive reliance on artificial laboratory tasks that were widely used in cognitive psychology before the mid 1970's. This complaint can be summarised by saying that he thought the cognitive psychology of his time had flaws in:

Select one of the following:

statistical conclusion validity
internal validity
construct validity
external validity

Explanation

Question 5 of 30

1

Which of the following is an issue of external validity?

Select one of the following:

A researcher in the USA finds that people who are primed with money are more selfish and more independent than controls, but this relationship is not found in NZ or Poland
A researcher in the USA investigating whether priming with money increases selfishness finds that the result holds when the experiment is run by assistant James but not when it is run by Bill.
A researcher in the USA investigating whether priming with money increases selfishness finds that the result of her experiments differ with the type of statistical test (t or Mann-Whitney U) that is used to examine the difference.
A researcher in the USA investigating whether priming with money increases selfishness finds that those who are primed are less likely to help others pick up fallen possessions but more likely to give charitable donations.

Explanation

Question 6 of 30

1

Which of the following is NOT an example of quasi-experimental research?

Select one of the following:

The New Zealand government examines the effect of changing the give way rules by examining the number of accidents at intersections before and after the rule change.
A researcher compares the 2010 and 2011 academic performance of psyc105 students to see if an earthquake affects academic performance.
Neuropsychologists examine the effect of temporal lobe epilepsy by giving sufferers and non-sufferers a battery of memory tests
A researcher divides psyc344 students into those scoring high (above the median) and low ( at or below the median) on openness to experience and compares their academic performance.

Explanation

Question 7 of 30

1

Which of the following is true for quasi-experiments?

Select one of the following:

If you are looking at the effect of a real-world change it is necessary to identify the change before it happens.
Actually there does not have to be a real-world change at all. Instead the researcher can rely on finding natural variation in the independent variables. ( so, for example, if we were looking at the effects on traffic laws on the accident rate, we could make use of the fact that different societies have different traffic laws.)
Often in quasi-experiments the real-world change does not occur in an instant but is spread over time.
The researcher has to have some control over the timing of the real world change.

Explanation

Question 8 of 30

1

Regression analyses are most frequently used in psychology to examine research conducted using:

Select one of the following:

Within-subjects true experiments
Single-subject experiments
Quasi-experiments
Correlational research

Explanation

Question 9 of 30

1

Deborah is interested in how people's tendency to take risks varies with their age, sex, and income. She takes a random sample of New Zealanders over the age of 18 and measures their tendency to take risks using Zukerman's sensation seeking scale. (higher scores indicate a greater tendency to take risks.) The regression of sensation seeking scores on the three variable yields significant beta-weights of -0.30 with age; +.15 with sex (coded 1= female; 2= male) and -.20 with net income. the strongest effect is:

Select one of the following:

age
sex
net income
you can't tell from this information

Explanation

Question 10 of 30

1

Same example. The percentage of variance in risk taking accounted for by age (alone) is:

Select one of the following:

30%
3%
9%
you can;t tell form this information

Explanation

Question 11 of 30

1

Same example again. Deborah includes some more variable in her research- intelligence, whether respondents have partners , and whether they live in the north or south island. She redoes all the regressions. What would you expect to happen to the beta-weights of age, sex and net income compared to the previous results?

Select one of the following:

They will change but in no predictable way, and on average they will stay about the same
They will not change
They will move closer to zero
They will become more negative.

Explanation

Question 12 of 30

1

Consider the causal diagram below.
Which variable could be a mediating variable

Select one of the following:

highest level of education attained at age 30
type of school attended ( private or state)
Parent's socioeconomic status
IQ at age 12

Explanation

Question 13 of 30

1

Which of the following is the most plausible criticism of the causal model in the preceding question?

Select one of the following:

There are other background variables that could be considered
the causal arrows should be drawn as two way
More types of schools should be considered
by measuring IQ at age 12 you neglect the possibility that intelligence may change as people get older.

Explanation

Question 14 of 30

1

If student respondents to a survey are asked " How many times this year have you talked to someone with red hair?" their answers are most likely to be:

Select one of the following:

accurate so log as they ave talked to at least one such person
underestimates
overestimates
not very accurate but the error is equally likely to be in either direction

Explanation

Question 15 of 30

1

Which of the following would be a reasonable factor favouring the use of open rather than closed questions?

Select one of the following:

You are intending a large sample
you want to be able to code the answers easily
it is important that respondents can answer the questionnaire quickly
You believe the issues are likely to be complex but at present you do not know a lot about the complexities

Explanation

Question 16 of 30

1

Which of the following is a disadvantage of web-based surveying?

Select one of the following:

expensive
inability to control the circumstances in which people answer
no opportunity to reduce the number of non- or missing responses to questions
very few people have internet connections

Explanation

Question 17 of 30

1

You have drafted up a questionnaire which you intend to give to recent immigrants to New Zealand so as to learn about their experiences. Which of the following should you take particular care to do?

Select one of the following:

make sure that any scales used in the questionnaire come from respectable journals
Give the questionnaire to your flatmate who is doing an MA in english to check that your wording is reasonable
Make sure your questionnaire is sufficiently long so that you can capture all of the different experiences they may of had.
Pilot to make sure that your questionnaire can be understood by recent immigrants.

Explanation

Question 18 of 30

1

Which of the following is true of ethical medical research?

Select one of the following:

All medical treatments or experiments which cause any risk to the patient are unethical
The patient must know exactly what treatment he or she is receiving or not receiving
Once the treatment phases are concluded all interaction between the researcher(s) and the patient must cease
If the procedure involves any risk the research should have enough statistical power that reasonably sized benefits can be detected.

Explanation

Question 19 of 30

1

Deliberate deception of participants as to what the research is about:

Select one of the following:

is always unacceptable
should be followed by debriefing the participants as to what the research was about
should always be preceded by having the participants complete consent forms
is not normally an issue for Ethics Committees

Explanation

Question 20 of 30

1

You have a choice between using a two item measure of extraversion (yes, there is one) and a longer scale. You would use the two-item measure if:

Select one of the following:

you were concerned about people lying
you want to look at subscales(sometimes called facets) of extraversion
you are suspicious of peoples ability to assess their own extraversion
you intend to have a long questionnaire and extraversion is only a small part of what interests you

Explanation

Question 21 of 30

1

Which of the following is most true of the relationship between reliability and validity when we are measuring a personality trait?

Select one of the following:

It is possible for a scale to be reliable but not valid
it is possible for a scale to be valid but not reliable
a scale which is low in validity will always have low reliability
a scale which is high in reliability will always have high validity

Explanation

Question 22 of 30

1

For which of the following dimensions would you not be worried if the test-retest reliability turned out to be low?

Select one of the following:

openness to experience
extraversion
intelligence
knowledge of psychological scale theory

Explanation

Question 23 of 30

1

Sarah has devised a 30 iten scale with which she intends to measure the trait of extraversion. She measures the cronbach alpha ( square ) of her scale and finds it to be 0.40. what implications does this have?

Select one of the following:

the scale is reasonable to use
the scales reliability is low but as for all scales the reliability could be improved by randomly cutting out half of the items
the critical question is whether Sarah's scale is capable of predicting such behaviour such as going to parties, appearing on stage etc.
The scale is quite badly flawed and Sarah should seriously look to redesigning or scrapping it.

Explanation

Question 24 of 30

1

Linda has developed a psychological scale that is designed to measure the value that different people put on money. As part of her validation procedure, she compares the scores on this scale for people who have term deposit accounts and those who do not. ( the idea is that people who have these accounts should put a higher value on money). In doing this test, she is investigating

Select one of the following:

face validity
predictive validity
concurrent validity
discriminant validity

Explanation

Question 25 of 30

1

Linda shows her results to Xia who comments that although this is a reasonable test of validity, there is a problem with it. People who have term deposit accounts are more likely to have higher incomes or higher wealth and may not necessarily put a higher value on money. Xia's comment relates to the test's

Select one of the following:

face validity
predictive validity
concurrent validity
discriminant validity

Explanation

Question 26 of 30

1

many psychological tests are restricted in availability, and require the tester to be certified as a psychologist. Also a payment needs to be made for each administration. These practices are most easily justified by which of the following arguments?

Select one of the following:

the tests usually require specialised expertise to interpret and score
if test availability was freer, ordinary people could attain them ( and the answers) and work out desirable answers
the process of restriction aids in the validation of the tests
the practice is in line with general restrictions on posting medical information about diseases and conditions on the internet

Explanation

Question 27 of 30

1

which of the following is true of IQ test norms?

Select one of the following:

different countries or cultures choose different means
the US mean is 100. other countries/cultures may have lower or higher means than this depending on their relative performance on the tests
the is 105 for women and 95 for men in present-day USA
the mean is 100 for both genders and for all countries that make extensive use of the test

Explanation

Question 28 of 30

1

One ( and only one) of the following statements is true of the Flynn effect. which one?

Select one of the following:

There are no plausible explanations of how people could really have been getting more intelligent over the period 1930-1980
our current knowledge of the Flynn effect means that it is quite reasonable to use IQ tests to measure and compare, for example, the intelligence of people of different ages and backgrounds who may be competing for jobs
IQ as measured by intelligence tests continues to still be improving and at an ever increasing rate
there appear to have been greater increases in measured performance than verbal IQ over the period 1930-1980

Explanation

Question 29 of 30

1

You are doing a meta-analysis of 63 studies relating people's academic performance to their self-esteem. All the studies have been taken from highly esteemed journals of psychology or education. Your meta-analysis produces a mean correlation of 0.25 this number is likely to be

Select one of the following:

an underestimate of the true real-life correlation
a good estimate of the true real-life correlation
an overestimate of the true real-life correlation
the estimate is equally likely to be an under-estimate or over-estimate, but is not likely to be a very good estimate ( so will have large error)

Explanation

Question 30 of 30

1

same meta-analysis. suppose we find that the correlation for people under the age of 35 is 0.24 and for people of 35 and over is 0.10. In this case, age would be a significant variable?

Select one of the following:

moderator
mediator
nuisance
biasing

	Created by kate fogarty over 8 years ago

simon's questions

simons questions

Question 1 of 30

Which of the following is a true experiment?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 2 of 30

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 3 of 30

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 4 of 30

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 5 of 30

Which of the following is an issue of external validity?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 6 of 30

Which of the following is NOT an example of quasi-experimental research?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 7 of 30

Which of the following is true for quasi-experiments?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 8 of 30

Regression analyses are most frequently used in psychology to examine research conducted using:

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 9 of 30

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 10 of 30

Same example. The percentage of variance in risk taking accounted for by age (alone) is:

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 11 of 30

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 12 of 30

Consider the causal diagram below. Which variable could be a mediating variable

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 13 of 30

Which of the following is the most plausible criticism of the causal model in the preceding question?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 14 of 30

If student respondents to a survey are asked " How many times this year have you talked to someone with red hair?" their answers are most likely to be:

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 15 of 30

Which of the following would be a reasonable factor favouring the use of open rather than closed questions?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 16 of 30

Which of the following is a disadvantage of web-based surveying?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 17 of 30

You have drafted up a questionnaire which you intend to give to recent immigrants to New Zealand so as to learn about their experiences. Which of the following should you take particular care to do?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 18 of 30

Which of the following is true of ethical medical research?

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 19 of 30

Deliberate deception of participants as to what the research is about:

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 20 of 30

You have a choice between using a two item measure of extraversion (yes, there is one) and a longer scale. You would use the two-item measure if:

Select one of the following:

Explanation

Question 21 of 30

Which of the following is most true of the relationship between reliability and validity when we are measuring a personality trait?

Select one of the following:

Consider the causal diagram below.
Which variable could be a mediating variable