Chapter 4
What is Fidelity and Responsibility?
This APA principle requires researchers to establish relationships of trust with participants and is often adhered to through debriefing.
What is the Ordinal scale?
This scale of measurement represents rank order, such as the order of finishers in a swimming race, but the distance between subsequent numerals may not be equal.
What is the Forced-choice format?
A question format in which people provide their opinion by choosing the best of two or more given options, like a "Yes or No" item.
What is Convenience sampling?
A biased sampling technique where researchers choose only those individuals who are easiest to contact, leading to an unrepresentative sample.
What is Justice?
This principle requires researchers to seek a fair balance between the kinds of people who participate in the research and the kinds of people who will benefit from the results.
What is Test-retest reliability?
This type of reliability measures consistent scores every time the measure is used, and is relevant when assessing measures of constructs that should be stable, like intelligence.
What is a Double-barreled question?
This specific wording pitfall asks two questions in one item, reducing the construct validity of the item.
What is Self-selection?
When only people who volunteer participate in a study, especially common in online polls, this biased sampling technique occurs.
What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
This independent committee of scientists and nonscientists performs a risk-benefit analysis to reduce potential harm to participants.
What is Content validity?
This subjective way to assess construct validity ensures the measure contains all the parts that your theory says it should contain, making it representative of the operationalization.
What is Fence sitting?
The response set in which a participant plays it safe by choosing the middle option on a scale for all items, instead of providing their true opinion.
What is Probability sampling (or random sampling)?
The overall term for sampling techniques where every member of the population of interest has an equal chance of being selected for the sample.
What is Integrity?
Violations of this principle include data fabrication and data falsification, compromising accuracy and truthfulness in science.
What is Criterion validity?
This type of validity is supported by correlational evidence showing that the measure is related to a concrete, relevant outcome or key behavior, such as a job satisfaction measure predicting job performance.
What is Reactivity?
This phenomenon occurs when participants change their behavior because they are aware they are being watched by researchers.
What is Stratified random sampling?
This probability sampling method involves identifying specific demographic categories (strata) and then randomly selecting individuals within each category.
What distinguishes data collected anonymously from data collected confidentially in psychological research?
If a researcher collects participants’ names but removes them from the dataset before analysis, the data are confidential. If no names or identifiers are collected at all, the data are anonymous.
What distinguishes a ratio scale of measurement from an interval scale?
A ratio scale has a meaningful zero (e.g., weight = 0 means no weight), but an interval scale does not (e.g., 0° doesn’t mean “no temperature”).
What is the difference between observer bias and observer effects?
Observer bias reflects distortions caused by researchers’ expectations, while observer effects arise from participants changing their behavior in response to being observed.
What is the Sampling technique?
When interrogating external validity, the sources emphasize that this aspect of a study is what determines generalizability, rather than the sample size.