Practice Quiz

Chapter 8
Experimental Design: Purposes and Pitfalls

Here are some questions for a practice quiz. The questions are multiple-choice and true-false. They may not resemble the questions that your instructor asks on a test. That is, the questions on your class exams may be more difficult and may include essay and short answer questions.

When you get your score, you will be shown the correct answers. Take the quiz as many times as you like.

1. The reasons why the independent variable might not have caused an effect on the dependent variable are called threats to internal validity.
True
False

2. A researcher studied the effect of defendant physical attractiveness on juror decisions. The attractive person was 20 years old, and the unattractive person was a 45-year old. The problem here is that:
age is confounded with attractiveness.
it is very difficult to operationally define physical attractiveness.
attractiveness is not related to perceptions of guilt.

3. The use of existing natural groups of participants usually results in equivalent groups for the experiment.
True
False

4. The same people participate in each condition of an experiment. What type of design is this?
repeated measures (within-subjects)
independent groups (between-subjects)
matched pairs

5. Mortality refers to the fact that participants may drop out of experiments.
True
False

6. Complete counterbalancing means that:
there were no practice effects
all possible orders of the IV were used
all Latin squares were constructed

7. An advantage of a repeated measures design is that it requires fewer participants.
True
False

8. Practice and fatigue effects are both problems with independent groups designs.
True
False

9. All things being equal, which design is more likely to result in a statistically significant effect?
Independent groups
Repeated measures

10. You identified the 15 employees in a large organization who were absent from work the most days during the previous month. You require these employees to attend a one-day program on time and stress management in an attempt to reduce absenteeism. In the following month, all of the employees improved their attendance. The improvement could be caused by the program or it might be due to:
statistical regression.
mortality
instrument decay

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