Experimental
A researcher tests if background music improves memory by having Group A listen to music while studying and Group B study in silence. In this study, "whether classical music is played" represents this variable.
What is the Independent Variable (IV)?
An extraneous factor that changes along with the independent variable, making cause unclear.
What is a Confounding Variable?
Reaction time scores in Group A are tightly clustered around the average, while Group B's scores vary widely from very fast to very slow. Compared to Group B, Group A has a smaller this.
What is Standard Deviation?
Before starting a study on stress response, a research team must submit their full methodology, consent forms, and risk assessments to this board.
What is the Institutional Review Board (IRB)?
An in-depth investigation focusing on only a single subject or unique individual.
What is a Case Study?
In an experiment measuring academic stress, defining "stress level" specifically as "a participant's heart rate in beats per minute immediately before taking an exam" serves as this.
What is an Operational Definition?
A research design that tracks and tests the exact same group of participants across multiple years or decades.
What is Longitudinal Research?
A histogram of standardized test scores has a long tail stretching far to the right due to a few exceptionally high scores.
What is a Positively Skewed Distribution?
Providing participants with a document explaining the study's purpose, potential risks, and right to withdraw before gathering any data satisfies this ethical requirement.
What is Informed Consent?
A study technique that combines data across multiple published studies on the same topic.
What is a Meta-Analysis?
Dr. Smith wants to ensure baseline individual differences (intelligence, sleep quality, motivation) are evenly spread across her experimental and control groups. She should use this procedure.
What is Random Assignment?
A research design studying different age groups (e.g., children, teens, adults) at the exact same point in time.
What is Cross-Sectional Research?
An athlete achieves a percentile rank of 88 on a national physical fitness assessment. This means the athlete did as well as or better than this percentage of people tested.
What is 88%?
Immediately following a social psychology experiment where participants were misled by actors pretending to be other subjects, the researcher must conduct this.
What is a Debriefing Session?
Observing subjects in their natural setting without manipulating variables or collecting quantitative data.
What is an Observational Study?
In a clinical trial for an anti-anxiety drug, participants in the control group who receive an inactive sugar pill report reduced anxiety purely because they expected the pill to work.
What is the Placebo Effect?
An analyst asserts on TV, "I knew the underdog team was going to win all along!" despite having predicted their defeat the previous day.
What is Hindsight Bias?
A researcher concludes that a new study technique produces results that are "statistically significant at p < 0.05". This indicates the results are unlikely to be caused by this.
What is Random Chance?
A flaw where a selected sample fails to accurately reflect the larger target population.
What is Sampling Bias?
Examining relationships between two sets of numerical data without placing subjects into treatment groups.
What is a Correlational Study?
To prevent both patient expectations and experimenters' unintentional body language from biasing the results, neither the participants nor the testing staff know who receives the drug versus the placebo.
What is a Double-Blind Study?
An individual underreports their weekly alcohol intake on an anonymous survey because they feel embarrassed about their actual habits.
What is Social Desirability Bias?
When extreme initial scores are followed by subsequent test scores that move closer to the average.
What is Regression Towards the Mean?
An actor working with researchers who pretends to be a real participant.
What is a Research Confederate?
The ONLY study design capable of proving a direct cause-and-effect relationship between variables.
What is an Experiment?