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Jennifer wants to study motor-pursuit performance (tracking a…
Jennifer wants to study motor-pursuit performance (tracking a moving light with a hand-held wand) under each of three conditions of distraction, high, medium, and low. Instead of using
three separate groups of participants, she makes sure her groups are equivalent by testing the same 12 participants under all three conditions of distraction. She finds that performance is poorest in the first (high distraction) condition, better in the second (medium distraction), but best in the third (low distraction) condition. She concludes that performance is hindered by distraction. What is the problem with this interpretation?
Group of answer choices
comparisons like that should only be made across separate groups of people
twelve participants are not enough to allow for such conclusions
her participants could have improved simply with practice over the three conditions
you can’t measure and compare a variable like motor pursuit performance over time
Two middle school teachers want to find which of three new violence prevention programs would be most effective in their school. From September through November, program #1 is in effect. It is then replaced by program #2 from December through February, and then program #3 runs from March through May. In June the teachers examined fight reports for the school year and find that there were 14 fights in the fall, 10 fights in the winter, and 6 fights in the spring. They conclude that program #3 is most effective is stopping violence. Which of the following is a plausible rival hypothesis to their interpretation?
Group of answer choices
fighting decreases in spring, anyway
the effects of programs #1 and #2 could have carried over into the spring
whatever program came third might have been associated with the fewest fights
all of the above are plausible alternative explanations
Dr. French makes sure that she has multiple video cameras recording her observation room during data collection. She also has multiple research assistants review the video recordings after the data are collected. This is to control for
Group of answer choices
attribute errors
experimenter expectancy
participant effects
recording errors
Which of the following is TRUE?
Group of answer choices
A valid measure is never reliable.
A reliable measure is never valid.
A reliable measure is always valid
A valid measure is always reliable.
Which of the following illustrates reliability?
Group of answer choices
Scores on a new test of reading comprehension correlate highly with scores on well established reading comprehension tests.
Jacquie takes three practice GRE verbal exams and scores 300, 299, and 301.
Dean takes an IQ test and scores at the 60th percentile.
Fred scores poorly on one school’s entrance exam but does better on another.
A sports psychologist develops a new technique that might improve accuracy in shooting free throws in school children. To test her technique she arranges to give the new program to a girls’ physical education class and the standard technique to the boys’ physical education class. She finds that indeed the girls’ accuracy in shooting improved more than the boys’ accuracy. A colleague correctly points out
Group of answer choices
that gender was an extraneous variable that was held constant.
that as this was an experiment the new technique caused the observed differences.
that the experiment is confounded by gender and is therefore inconclusive.
that the results were actually caused by gender and not the technique.
Dr. Prentice, principal of an elementary school, instructs her teachers to employ a new aggression-reduction program with the second graders, and to keep using it on that group of students for the next three years. She finds that relative to the start of the program, aggression in that group of students is down 35%. This example illustrates the possibility of ________________ as a plausible rival hypothesis.
Group of answer choices
attrition
history
selection
maturation
In a study designed to assess the effectiveness of a new therapeutic technique to help patients stop smoking, research participants are asked to record in a diary each time they smoke a cigarette. At the beginning of the two week experiment participants are very careful about noting every time they smoke a cigarette. However by the end of the two weeks they often forget to record each cigarette they smoke making it appear that they smoked less at the end of the experimental treatment. The results in this study are confounded by
Group of answer choices
maturation.
history.
instrumentation.
attrition.
