Sampling
Using platforms like SONA are an example of what method of finding participants?
Convenience Sampling
Johnny is interested in studying the rate of skin conductance and increased heart rate in a sample of university students who are about to present a presentation. He will place electrodes on their palms and heart, he measures the signals before, during, and after the student presents. What type of measure does this best describe?
Physiological Measure
What is the Replication Crisis?
The inability of researchers to replicate earlier research findings.
What two features set Experimental Designs apart from other types of research designs?
Manipulating an independent variable, and Random Assignment of participants to conditions.
Sully decides to study firefighters from different bases, to see how their attitudes and beliefs differ on the topic of the importance of self-care on and off the job. What type of sampling technique does this best describe?
Probability Sampling/Cluster Sampling
An anxiety measure is used to evaluate an individual's rate of anxiety. One week later, the same measure is provided and the researchers obtain different results. What is this measure lacking?
Reliability
As Joe is preparing to conduct an experiment, he outlines all of his methods on sampling participants, how many participants he'll take, how he's going to execute his study, and how he's going to statistically analyze the data. He then uploads it to a shared online database to keep himself accountable for how he's going to do the study, to ensure reliability and validity is maintained. What is Joe doing?
Pre-registration
You decide to test 3 hypotheses in the lab, but only 2 come back statistically significant. What should you do with the 3rd hypothesis that failed to find a significant difference?
Report it anyway
What is the method of using a chance process to place participants into treatment conditions so each participant has an equal chance of partaking in any of the treatment conditions?
Random Assignment
Anna loves completing surveys and online quizzes in her spare time for fun. Anytime she sees a flyer asking for participants for a research study, she signs herself up. What type of sampling error does Anna’s situation illustrate best?
Self-Selection Bias
You are designing a test in a zoology course regarding the physiology of various animals but you are only asking questions regarding the physiology of frogs. This test would be… (identify high, low, moderate and type of validity)
You conduct a series of studies on the relationship between boredom and bad grades in primary school children. The items on your questionnaire include: “Are you often tired?” and “Do you find it difficult to sit still?”. What issue with the construct of “boredom” may threaten the validity of your findings?
Construct is ill-defined
A student studies for an exam only after writing the exam. What would be the issue with concluding that the student’s exam grade is related to their studying?
Temporal Precedence
Jared wants to study the population of females in Edmonton aged 18-25. To find participants, he walks around West Edmonton Mall with a clipboard, asking any young-looking woman he sees if she wants to participate in his study. What sampling technique is Jared attempting here?
Purposive/Judgemental Sampling
Alexis is being assessed for Social Anxiety Disorder by a psychologist, but there is no direct way to test social anxiety. The psychologist instead collects the following information before coming to a conclusion: Alexis’s scores on a social anxiety questionnaire, statements from professors from classes where she had to give an oral presentation, and observations from her friends and family about her behaviour in social settings. What type of evidence did the psychologist use to make a diagnosis?
Converging Evidence
Jared comes to the conclusion that eating a bar of chocolate before an exam increases the likelihood of scoring a B+ or higher on an exam. He publishes his results in Journal of Prestigious Findings without including his raw data, and does not reply to email requests to see the data itself. What fundamental Questionable Research Practice is Jared engaging in?
Lack of Transparency
You conduct an experiment on a new treatment for OCD where ½ of your sample responds extremely well to your intervention, ¼ improves mildly, and the remaining quarter gets worse. What would be the most appropriate thing to do with the data from the ¼ of the participants who got worse?
Report it anyway
You decide to test if studying for 8hrs straight before taking an exam improves grades over studying 2hrs per day for 4 days before the exam. What kind of basic experiment is this?
Between-Subjects Design
You want to study how often people in Edmonton buy drip coffee vs. matcha lattes, so you decide to sample three coffee shops: Deville Roasters in the SAMU building, Starbucks in Building 6, and The Bean’s List in Building 5. You discover that 1/3 of all sales at these establishments are matcha lattes, while only 1/4 are drip coffees, so you conclude that Edmontonians strongly prefer matcha over coffee. What is an obvious issue with generalizing the findings of your study to the greater population in Edmonton?
Representativeness of the Sample
Getting too much or too little sleep is considered a symptom of depression. Jared wishes to measure depression in his classmates, but to keep his statistical analysis simple, he gives them a survey asking to report how many hours of sleep they’ve gotten a night. When reviewing the results, Jared decides to classify anyone who has slept <6hrs or >9hrs as depressed. What property of measurement is Jared violating with this conclusion?
Construct Validity
Your friend wants to study a well-established construct in a new population, but doesn’t feel like reading all the past articles studying this construct, and would prefer to design a new measurement tool instead. With the intention of steering them away from Questionable Measurement Practices, what advice would you give your friend?
Use existing measures of the construct.
You are studying a construct with very little research behind it, and need to create a new measurement tool in the form of a questionnaire that you believe will capture your construct of interest in your desired population. In addition to providing appropriate theoretical justification for your decision to create a new questionnaire, Open Science requires that you:
Transparently report every item on the questionnaire
You are a researcher interested in observing how caffeine affects focus during completing academic tasks. On one day, your 5 participants are given no caffeine and asked to complete a variety of math sheets in the lab. Then, on another day, the 5 participants are given one 140mg energy drink and asked to complete different math sheets. Examining participant performance on the math sheets between the two conditions is an example of…
Within-Subjects Design