Practice Test #1

1.)  Fred claims he has ESP because he sometimes thinks about his mother just before she calls on the phone.  In using this as evidence for ESP, Fred is committing a _________ bias.

2.) Which way of knowing/gaining knowledge would be furthest removed from scientific thinking?

3.)  Which of the following is an advantage of using the "Method of Authority" as a way of gaining knowledge.

4.)  What is a series of premises that lead to a conclusion?

5.) Which of the following is one of the chief advantages of using the scientific method?

6.) What is one reason a scientist reports the methods used to obtain their data in great detail in a journal article?

7.)  Which of the following is NOT an empirical question?

8.) A researcher at the College of the Southwest conducts a research project on the studying habits of students.  She reports that, on average, college students study 20 hours per week.  This is an example of  what kind of research?

9.)  Which of the following is an example of research that arose through serendipity (Velcro, bystander effect, multiple personality disorder)?

10.) A dog's escape behavior could be the result of trial-and-error learning or it could be an example of a form of sophisticated reasoning on the part of the dog.  The first explanation is more ______ than the second.

11.) What is the advantage of using operational definitions?

12.) The book "The Three Faces of Eve" is an example of  what type of study typically used to generate research hypotheses?

13.) What are the qualities of a good working hypothesis?

14.) If you conducted research on the effects of jogging on the alleviation of depression, __________ would be the independent variable and __________ would be the dependent variable.

15.) What would be a possible extranneous variable in the study mentioned in the previous question?

16.) What is one advantage of the median over the mean?

17.) Measures of variance provide information about:

18.) Scores from data sets with different ranges can be compared and combined using their respective _____

19.)Identify the scale of measurement  being used for the following study:

"Pat believes that those with an obsessive-compulsive disorder will make fewer formatting errors on APA-style lab reports than those without the disorder."

20.) The _______ is a code of ethics for medical experimentation with human subjects.

21.) By signing an informed consent form, an individual has indicated that he or she is willing to _________ the research study

22.) All of the following are included in the APA code for the use of animals in research except ___________.

23.) A researcher knowingly and willingly falsifies his data in order to improve the likelihood that his study will be published in a professional journal.  Which principle of the APA/APS code does this violate?

24.) Which of the following is one of the techniques used by pseudosciences to explain away anomalous data?

25.) Those who believe that UFOs have visited the Earth frequently claim that evidence exists supporting their belief in UFOs but the government is suppressing the evidence.  This is an example of which characteristic trait of the pseudosciences?

26.) The ______ of the correlation coefficient indicates the direction of the relationship; the ______ indicates the strength of the relationship.

27.) Which of the following is one of the reasons a researcher can not assume causality when they identify a strong correlation between two variables?

28.) For which of the following correlation coefficients indicates the strongest relationship between two variables?

a. r = .34

b. r = -.75

c. r = -.34

d. r = .09

1.) List four ways of knowing.

2.) Define empiricism.

3.) Why does the scientific method depend on determinism?

4.) "What is Beauty?"  is a non-empirical question.  Write an empirical question that would be related to the issue raised and lead to a potentially interesting scientific study.

5.) Provide an operational definition of "aggression"

6.) What is the difference between a theory and a hypothesis?

7.) Describe the difference between a mediating variable and a moderating variable.

8.) What is the pre-existing bias problem and why is it a problem for psychology?

9.) Identify the IV(s), levels of the IV and DV(s) in the following example:

"In a study of learning, some rats shocked and some rats are made sick after drinking sweetened water. Other rats are shocked or made sick after drinking sparkling water. The experimenter measures how much water the rats drink."

10.) What are outliers? What problems may they create when calculating the arithmetic mean? How might this problem be resolved?

11.)  Identify the five principles of the APA Code of Ethics.

12.) An informed consent form informs the participant about four aspects of an experimental study.  What are they?

13.) Name four ways in which a pseudoscience can try to associate itself with true science.  Provide an example of one of those ways.

14.) List four potential errors associated with using correlational research.

15.) Provide an example of the directionality problem.

16.) Briefly describe how partial correlation can be used to resolve the third variable problem.