Methods of Knowing
A student says, “I know this brand of tea works for headaches because my grandmother has used it for years, and everyone in my family swears by it.” Which method of acquiring knowledge is MOST clearly represented?
A. Authority
B. Tenacity
C. Intuition
D. Rationalism
B. Tenacity
A researcher wants to determine whether people become more satisfied with their lives as they move from their twenties into their forties. She considers two designs:
Design A: Survey 25-year-olds and 45-year-olds in 2026.
Design B: Survey the same participants at ages 25 and 45.
Why does Design A answer a different question from Design B?
A. Design A cannot measure life satisfaction, whereas Design B can.
B. Design A is necessarily correlational, whereas Design B is necessarily experimental.
C. Design A compares people of different ages, whereas Design B can examine change within the same individuals.
D. Design B can establish causation, whereas Design A cannot.
C. Design A compares people of different ages, whereas Design B can examine change within the same individuals.
A researcher decides to measure “psychological well-being.” She immediately writes 50 items without first deciding whether she means life satisfaction, positive affect, self-esteem, or some combination of these.
What is the most fundamental problem?
A. The item pool is too large to analyse efficiently.
B. The construct has not been adequately articulated and differentiated.
C. The response format should have been selected after data collection.
D. The scale should have been administered before the construct was identified.
B. The construct has not been adequately articulated and differentiated.
A new life-satisfaction measure correlates .80 with another life-satisfaction measure and .46 with positive affect.
Which inference is MOST justified?
A. The second relationship indicates poor construct validity because different constructs should not correlate.
B. The first relationship demonstrates reliability, while the second demonstrates validity.
C. Both relationships demonstrate convergent validity because positive affect is related to life satisfaction.
D. The first relationship supports convergent validity, while the lower relationship with positive affect is consistent with discriminant validity.
D. The first relationship supports convergent validity, while the lower relationship with positive affect is consistent with discriminant validity.
A researcher begins with the broad topic “sleep and academic performance.” After reviewing previous research, she notices that existing studies have examined total sleep duration but rarely examine variability in sleep timing.
What has changed as a result of the literature review?
A. A broad topic has been developed into a more specific potential research question.
B. A theoretical hypothesis has been empirically supported.
C. An operational definition has already been selected.
D. A research design has already been determined.
A. A broad topic has been developed into a more specific potential research question.
A student is deciding whether a particular study technique improves examination performance. Her older sister tells her, “I used this technique throughout university and always did well, so it definitely works.” The student accepts the claim.
Which combination BEST describes the basis of the student's knowledge and its main limitation?
A. Intuition; the conclusion may reflect a feeling that cannot be independently verified.
B. Authority; the conclusion depends on another person's experience rather than systematic evidence.
C. Tenacity; the conclusion is maintained because the technique has been repeatedly discussed.
D. Empiricism; the student's sister has provided direct evidence about the technique.
B. Authority; the conclusion depends on another person's experience rather than systematic evidence.
A researcher wants to know whether political trust among university students has changed between 2000 and 2025. She surveys a new representative sample of university students every five years.
What does this design allow her to examine MOST directly?
A. Changes in political trust within particular individuals
B. Changes in the distribution of political trust within the population over time
C. Causes of changes in individuals' political trust
D. Stability of political trust within the same respondents
B. Changes in the distribution of political trust within the population over time
A researcher defines resilience as consisting of persistence, emotional recovery, and adaptability. Her initial 40-item pool contains 35 items about persistence.
Which response is most defensible?
A. Retain the items because a larger number of items necessarily produces better reliability.
B. Revise the item pool so that the proposed dimensions of the construct are more adequately represented.
C. Remove the five items concerning emotional recovery and adaptability because they may reduce internal consistency.
D. Proceed directly to statistical analysis because dimensionality is determined entirely by item correlations.
B. Revise the item pool so that the proposed dimensions of the construct are more adequately represented.
A new anxiety scale correlates .83 with an established anxiety scale and .78 with a measure of depression.
What would make the second result particularly important when evaluating the new scale?
A. It may raise the question of whether the new scale adequately distinguishes anxiety from another related construct.
B. It indicates that the anxiety scale has poor test-retest reliability.
C. It establishes that the two constructs are actually identical.
D. It provides stronger evidence of convergent validity than the correlation with the anxiety measure.
A. It may raise the question of whether the new scale adequately distinguishes anxiety from another related construct.
A researcher hypothesizes: “Students who experience greater academic stress will report poorer sleep.”
Before testing this hypothesis, she defines “academic stress” using a specific questionnaire and “sleep” using average nightly sleep duration.
Why is this step important?
A. It determines which sampling method must be used.
B. It determines whether the predicted relationship will be statistically significant.
C. It establishes that the selected variables are causally related.
D. It converts the theoretical variables into forms that can be observed and measured.
D. It converts the theoretical variables into forms that can be observed and measured.
Consider the argument: “All students who procrastinate experience academic stress.
Riya experiences academic stress.
Therefore, Riya procrastinates.”
Which statement BEST describes the problem?
A. The premises are empirical observations, so the argument cannot be rational.
B. The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises, even though the argument is presented in logical form.
C. Rational reasoning cannot be used to draw conclusions about psychological variables.
D. The conclusion would be valid if the second premise were based on intuition.
B. The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises, even though the argument is presented in logical form.
A successive independent samples study finds that the percentage of students reporting severe academic stress rises from 25% to 50% over ten years.
Which conclusion would be LEAST justified?
A. The proportion of students reporting severe stress increased across the study period.
B. The population distribution of reported stress appears to have changed.
C. Some students in the original sample may have become more stressed over time.
D. The results are consistent with a population-level change in stress.
C. Some students in the original sample may have become more stressed over time.
A new scale is intended for use during brief online screening sessions. During pilot testing, respondents report that the questionnaire takes 15 minutes rather than the expected three minutes.
What is the most appropriate interpretation?
A. The construct is probably poorly defined.
B. The pilot has revealed a practical problem with the intended administration context that may require revision.
C. The scale has demonstrated poor construct validity.
D. The respondents are unsuitable because they could not complete the measure quickly enough.
B. The pilot has revealed a practical problem with the intended administration context that may require revision.
A test-retest coefficient is .88. Participant scores are not identical on the two occasions, but people who scored relatively high initially tend to remain relatively high later.
Why can the measure still be considered reliable?
A. Reliability requires identical scores only when the scale is an interval measure.
B. Test-retest reliability concerns consistency in relative position rather than exact equality of scores.
C. Any correlation above .80 means that measurement error can be ignored.
D. Changes in individual scores are evidence that the construct itself has changed
B. Test-retest reliability concerns consistency in relative position rather than exact equality of scores.
Two researchers investigate the same variables.
Researcher A asks: “Are academic stress and sleep quality related?”
Researcher B asks: “Does increasing academic stress cause sleep quality to decline?”
Why should their research strategies potentially differ?
A. The first concerns association, whereas the second requires evidence relevant to causation.
B. The first requires descriptive statistics, whereas the second requires inferential statistics.
C. The first involves two variables, whereas the second involves only one.
D. The second question can only be answered using self-report.
A. The first concerns association, whereas the second requires evidence relevant to causation.
A researcher argues:
“If lack of sleep impairs concentration, and this student is unable to concentrate, then the student must be sleep deprived.”
Which criticism is strongest?
A. The conclusion assumes that the relationship stated in the first premise works in only one direction.
B. The premises cannot be used to reach any conclusion because psychological variables cannot be reasoned about logically.
C. The conclusion would require empirical evidence rather than any form of reasoning.
D. The argument is invalid because the researcher has not consulted an expert.
A. The conclusion assumes that the relationship stated in the first premise works in only one direction.
A longitudinal study reports declining loneliness among participants over eight years. However, participants who dropped out were younger and had reported greater loneliness at baseline.
What is the most important methodological concern?
A. The study may no longer adequately represent the original sample because of selective attrition.
B. Repeated measurement makes individual change impossible to estimate.
C. Longitudinal designs cannot examine naturally occurring changes.
D. Different participants were measured at each time point.
A. The study may no longer adequately represent the original sample because of selective attrition.
A researcher analyzes a new scale and discovers that several items perform poorly. She rewrites the problematic items and then administers the revised scale to a new sample.
Why is this procedure appropriate?
A. Psychometric findings can inform further item development, making scale construction iterative.
B. The first sample provides all the information needed to validate the revised scale.
C. Rewriting items is appropriate only when the original construct is abandoned.
D. Once an item has been empirically evaluated, it should not be modified.
A. Psychometric findings can inform further item development, making scale construction iterative.
A researcher wants to make reliable distinctions between people in a study of athletic ability. She can either recruit only professional athletes or recruit people ranging from beginners to professionals.
Which sample is likely to make reliable differentiation easier?
A. The professionals, because reducing variation reduces measurement error.
B. The broader sample, because greater variation makes differences among individuals easier to distinguish.
C. The professionals, because greater expertise guarantees more accurate self-report.
D. Either sample, because reliability depends only on the questionnaire and not on the sample.
B. The broader sample, because greater variation makes differences among individuals easier to distinguish.
A person says: “I don't need to investigate whether this traditional remedy works. People have believed in it for generations.” Which response BEST identifies the limitation in this reasoning?
A. Repeated acceptance does not provide a mechanism for correcting an established belief when it is wrong.
B. Traditional beliefs are necessarily based on authority rather than experience.
C. A belief can only be considered knowledge if it has been logically derived.
D. Empirical evidence is useful only when a belief is new rather than longstanding.
A. Repeated acceptance does not provide a mechanism for correcting an established belief when it is wrong.
A researcher measures the same participants' fear of crime every six months. After the first survey, participants begin deliberately paying more attention to crime stories in the media and report becoming more concerned.
Which issue should the researcher consider when interpreting the change?
A. Noncomparability of successive samples
B. Reactive measurement
C. Sampling error
D. Cluster effects
B. Reactive measurement
A single Likert-type item has the response options:
1 = Never
2 = Rarely
3 = Sometimes
4 = Often
5 = Always
A researcher interprets a two-point difference anywhere on the scale as representing the same psychological difference.
What has the researcher assumed?
A. The categories are ordered and the distance between adjacent categories has a consistent psychological meaning.
B. The categories are nominal but happen to have convenient numerical labels.
C. The scale provides ratio-level information because zero is represented by “Never.”
D. The response categories capture equal frequencies of the underlying psychological trait.
A. The categories are ordered and the distance between adjacent categories has a consistent psychological meaning.
A researcher finds:
Which conclusion is safest?
A. There is evidence of convergent validity, while the evidence for discriminant validity is less clear.
B. There is evidence of discriminant validity, while convergent validity cannot be evaluated.
C. Both convergent and discriminant validity are established because .76 is greater than .51.
D. Neither form of validity can be assessed using correlations.
A. There is evidence of convergent validity, while the evidence for discriminant validity is less clear.