Name ____________________

Psychology 259-Experimental Psychology-Exam 2

Define AND GIVE AN EXAMPLE of each (worth 4 points each)

  1. Variable:

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  2. Confounding variable

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  3. Carryover effect

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  4. Emic

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  5. Double blind

 

Choose 5 of the following questions to answer (worth 4 points each)

  1. Give an example of both a physiological IV and a stimulus IV.

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  2. Why are participant characteristics not "true" IV’s?

    3.  

     

     

  3. Name 2 ways that one could measure a DV and give examples.

    4.  

     

     

     

  4. Why is it a good idea to operationally define (measure) a DV more than one way in a single study?

    5.  

     

     

     

  5. Under what condition do you need counterbalancing?

    6.  

     

     

  6. Name at least 3 ways that an experimenter might control or reduce experimenter and/or participant expectancies.

 

 

 

 

One-word answers (worth 2 points each)

  1. Which descriptive statistic would you use to report "marital status (divorced, married, widowed, etc.)"? ____________________
  2. What is the easiest measure of variability to compute? __________________
  3. What is the most common level of significance used in psychology? __________
  4. In what section of an APA paper would you find the thesis statement? _________________
  5. The first two or three words of a title that are printed at the top of each page is called the ___________________________.

 

True/False (worth 2 points each)

  1. Extreme scores can influence the mean.
  2. The standard deviation does not affect the shape of the distribution.
  3. A significant correlation means that one of the two variables caused the other.
  4. We can never prove our hypothesis.
  5. Differential carryover effects can be eliminated with counterbalancing.

 

Essays (worth 10 points each)

  1. Explain what an operational definition is and why it is so important to psychology. Operationally define the variable "athletic ability" in 2 different ways.

    2.  

     

     

     

  2. Imagine that you are trying to discover the "true" differences between personality traits in men and women.
  1. In what way could this be a socially constructed phenomenon?
  2. What problems might you encounter when you go to conduct a cross cultural study of this topic?

 

 

 

Other (worth 10 points each)

  1. Professor Jones conducts an experiment and obtains the following results using an Independent t-test.
    2. Test Variable Group Variable Mean t-value sig. level
    Depression Experimental 100.5 7.51 .04
      Control 120.7    

    How would you interpret these results?

     

     

  2. Professor Lawler computes a correlation between the variables a) number of clubs or extra curricular activities a person is involved in and b) GPA. She obtains the following results. r = -.50, significance = .025

a. How would you interpret these results?

          b. Give at least 2 possible explanations for this finding?

 

*Bonus (worth 5 points): What is the effect size of this correlation and what does it mean?

 

Extra Credit (worth 2 points each)

  1. What is a value label and give an example of how you would set it up for a variable like "ethnic group".

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  2. Distinguish between a variable name and a variable label in SPSS.