Trust Me, I'm a Scientist!
This approach to gaining knowledge relies on systematic observation and evidence rather than personal beliefs or intuition.
What is empiricism?
A student believes that studying with music improves memory, so they only pay attention to research supporting that belief while ignoring studies that disagree. This cognitive bias is called ______.
What is confirmation bias?
A personality questionnaire produces nearly identical scores when the same person completes it two weeks apart. This property of the measure is called ______.
What is test-retest reliability?
A researcher investigates whether the color of a classroom affects students' concentration. Students complete a concentration test in either a blue or yellow classroom. The classroom color is this type of variable.
What is the independent variable (IV)?
A psychologist wants to study the sleep habits of all college students in Wisconsin but collects data from only 200 students. The 200 students represent this group.
What is a sample?
A researcher predicts that students who sleep eight hours will perform better on a memory test than students who sleep four hours. This specific, testable prediction is called a ______.
What is a hypothesis?
After watching several news stories about airplane crashes, a student believes flying is more dangerous than driving. This mental shortcut is called ______.
What is the availability heuristic?
A researcher creates a new test of mathematical ability, but the test only includes addition problems and ignores subtraction, multiplication, and division. This type of validity is questionable.
What is content validity?
A researcher wants to study procrastination and defines it as the number of hours between receiving an assignment and beginning work on it. This specific way of measuring procrastination is called ______.
What is an operational definition?
A researcher wants to study students' opinions about campus dining and surveys the first 50 students entering the cafeteria. This sampling method is called ______.
What is convenience sampling?
Before collecting any data, a researcher publicly documents their hypotheses, methods, and planned analyses. This practice helps prevent researchers from changing their predictions after seeing the results.
What is preregistration?
A researcher wants to examine whether background music affects reading comprehension. Half the participants complete a reading task with music first, followed by silence, while the other half complete the tasks in the opposite order. This technique is called ______.
What is counterbalancing?
A researcher develops a questionnaire measuring how adventurous someone is. People who score high on the questionnaire also tend to participate in more risky outdoor activities, such as rock climbing and skydiving. This provides evidence for which type of validity?
What is criterion validity?
A researcher investigates whether wearing a superhero costume increases confidence. One group wears a superhero costume, while another wears regular clothing. However, the superhero group also receives encouraging compliments before the confidence test. The compliments represent this type of variable.
What is a confound?
A researcher randomly selects a starting name from a university directory and then selects every 15th student until reaching the desired sample size. This probability sampling method is called ______.
What is systematic sampling?
A researcher studying memory in rats develops a less stressful testing procedure and provides additional enrichment to improve the animals' well-being. This practice demonstrates which of the Three Rs of animal research?
What is Refinement?
A researcher expects children who receive a new teaching intervention to be more cooperative. When observing ambiguous behaviors, the researcher consistently interprets them more favorably for those children. This bias is called ______.
What is observer bias?
A researcher develops a questionnaire measuring how easily people become embarrassed. Scores are strongly related to an established measure of social anxiety but show little relationship with a measure of mathematical ability. These findings provide evidence for TWO types of validity.
What are convergent validity and discriminant validity?
A researcher collects three pieces of information from participants: their finishing position in a costume contest (1st, 2nd, 3rd), the temperature of the room in degrees Fahrenheit, and the number of Halloween decorations they own. Identify the level of measurement for each variable, IN ORDER.
A researcher studying sleep habits recruits 300 participants, including 150 night-shift workers, even though night-shift workers make up only a small percentage of the population being studied. This sampling strategy is called ______.
What is oversampling?
A researcher finds that students who consume more caffeine tend to report higher anxiety. The researcher concludes that caffeine increases anxiety, even though both variables were measured at the same time. This requirement for establishing causation has not been demonstrated.
What is temporal precedence?
A survey includes the statements "I enjoy meeting new people" and "I prefer avoiding social interactions." A participant strongly agrees with both, despite the statements being intended to measure opposing tendencies. Identify the response bias.
What is acquiescence?
A researcher develops a 20-item questionnaire measuring competitiveness. Participants respond consistently across all 20 items, suggesting that the questions measure the same underlying construct. However, several questions ask about favorite foods and sleeping habits, making the questionnaire appear unrelated to competitiveness. Identify the type of reliability demonstrated and the type of validity that is questionable.
What are internal reliability and face validity?
A researcher tests whether chewing gum improves problem-solving. Participants randomly receive gum or no gum, but the gum group completes an easy puzzle while the no-gum group completes a difficult puzzle. The gum group performs better. Although the researcher manipulated the IV and observed differences in performance, this essential requirement for establishing causation has not been satisfied.
What is internal validity (the absence of confounds)?
A researcher studying academic burnout randomly selects 5 universities, then randomly selects 4 departments within each university, and finally randomly selects 20 students from each department. Identify the specific probability sampling method used.
What is multistage sampling?