Social Psychology Research Methods
Final Exam
Course Introduction
This course explores the foundational research methods used in social psychology, focusing on how scientists design studies, collect data, and interpret social behavior. Students will learn to critically evaluate experimental, correlational, and observational research, with an emphasis on ethical considerations, hypothesis development, measurement techniques, and data analysis. Through hands-on activities and examination of landmark studies, the course equips students with practical skills to conduct their own research and effectively communicate findings relevant to understanding social influence, attitudes, group dynamics, and interpersonal relationships.
Recommended Textbook
Research Methods in Psychology 10th Edition by John
J Shaughnessy
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Chapter 1: Introduction
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Q1) Explain why psychologists at the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century embraced an empirical approach to advance understanding about human behavior.
Answer: At the turn of the 20<sup>th</sup> century society was interested in pseudoscientific topics such as clairvoyance and telepathy.To establish the young field of psychology as a science,the early psychologists focused on behavior and mental processes that could be observed directly.By adopting an empirical approach,with its emphasis on direct observation and experimentation for answering questions,early psychologists were able to divorce psychology from pseudoscience.
Q2) Data fabrication,plagiarism,and failure to acknowledge individuals who contributed to a research project
A) reflect the social and cultural context in which scientists conduct their work.
B) are behaviors that happen less often than people think.
C) represent violations of scientific integrity.
D) are easy to detect in research reports.
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: The Scientific Method
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Q1) Which of the following is not one of the conditions for making a causal inference?
A) covariation of events
B) a time-order relationship
C) confounding of variables
D) elimination of plausible alternative causes
Answer: C
Q2) Scientists would likely reject the hypothesis that a person was violent because the person was possessed by the Devil.Scientists reject a hypothesis like this one not because it is inherently wrong,but because the hypothesis lacks the necessary scientific characteristic of being A) complex.
B) circular.
C) concise.
D) testable.
Answer: D
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Chapter 3: Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Psychological Research
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Q1) Which of the following is typically not one of the dimensions a researcher should consider when deciding what information is private and what safeguards should be employed?
A) sensitivity of the information
B) source of the information
C) how the information will be disseminated
D) setting in which behavior is observed
Answer: B
Q2) Which of the following is one type of risk that contributes to the determination of the risk/benefit ratio?
A) economic risk
B) social risk
C) failure risk
D) media risk
Answer: B
Q3) Identify the conditions under which participants are considered to be "at risk."
Answer: Participants are considered "at risk" when the possibility of physical,psychological,or social injury is judged to be more than minimal risk.Minimal risk is defined as no greater than the risks of daily living.
Page 5
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Chapter 4: Observation
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Q1) Read this description of a study and answer the question that follow. A reporter at a university newspaper sought to gather evidence about the quality of teaching at the university.For one week at the beginning of the semester she attended 5 different,large-lecture classes each day,each with a different instructor.She asked 4 other reporters to do this too (they all attended different classes),and she trained them regarding the ratings they would make.The reporters pretended to be students,but sat in the back of class so the instructor wouldn't notice their observations.Using 10-point rating scales,they rated each instructor on five dimensions: interesting,organized,informative,friendly,and respectful.They summarized their findings and reported that,in general,the quality of teaching at the university is very good. Identify one aspect of the procedures in this study that the reporter used to improve the reliability of the observations.
Q2) Identify one factor that decreases interobserver reliability and one factor that increases interobserver reliability.
Q3) Identify the four measurement scales and provide an example of each measurement scale.
Q4) Define and explain the reason for using time sampling and situation sampling in naturalistic observation.
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Chapter 5: Survey Research
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Q1) When a survey has been created and administered by a sponsoring organization,such as a company or institution,we should
A) conclude the survey results will always be biased in favor of the sponsoring organization.
B) examine whether the survey data have been selectively analyzed or reported. C) assume the research will be poor quality.
D) automatically ignore the survey results.
Q2) If the relationships between measures of poverty,chaos,and psychological distress differed depending on whether families lived in rural or urban areas,this variable of population density (rural vs.urban)would be considered a A) spurious variable.
B) mediating variable.
C) causal variable.
D) moderator variable.
Q3) Distinguish between probability sampling and nonprobability sampling.Name two types of probability samples and one type of nonprobability sample.
Q4) Identify the key features of a good questionnaire item.
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Chapter 6: Independent Groups Designs
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Q1) A researcher was interested in whether divorce and remarriage influence the extent to which children are sociable.At a nearby school,the researcher classified 5<sup>th</sup>-graders into one of three groups: intact parents (no divorce),divorced (single-parent families),and remarried parents.The researcher interviewed the 5<sup>th</sup>-graders and rated their sociability,and also asked them to complete a questionnaire that assessed their level of comfort in different social situations. Describe the dependent variable(s)in this study.
Q2) An instructor randomly assigns two sections of his course to an experimental condition (new teaching method)or control condition (regular teaching method).Students in the 9:30 section receive the experimental treatment and students in the 1:30 section participate in the control condition.At the end of the semester the instructor's tests reveal that students in the 9:30 section had significantly higher test scores than students in the 1:30 section.Based on this summary,we can state that
A) the results are uninterpretable because of intact groups.
B) the findings have external validity across two times of day.
C) the experiment has internal validity.
D) all of these
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Chapter 7: Repeated Measures Designs
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Q1) When selected orders of conditions (Latin Square or random starting order with rotation)are used to balance practice effects in the incomplete repeated measures design,
A) the number of selected orders must be exactly equal to the number of conditions in the experiment.
B) the number of selected orders will always be equal to some multiple of the number of conditions in the experiment.
C) the number of selected orders will always be equal to one less than the number of conditions in the experiment.
D) there is no restriction on the number of possible orders needed to balance practice effects in the incomplete repeated measures design.
Q2) In the incomplete repeated measures design,the levels of the independent variable for each participant are perfectly confounded with the
A) characteristics of that particular participant.
B) order in which the levels are presented.
C) individual differences variables in the experiment.
D) characteristics of the experimental task.
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Chapter 8: Complex Designs
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Q1) When an independent variable such as task difficulty has been shown to interact with a second independent variable such as age,the generality (i.e.,ability to generalize the findings)of the effect of the task difficulty variable is A) complete.
B) unaffected.
C) limited.
D) increased.
Q2) In a complex design experiment,researchers found that younger and older people performed equally well on a memory task when they were tested in the afternoon,but the older people performed better than the younger people when they were tested in the morning.The different effect of age at the two times of day represents A) a main effect.
B) an interaction effect.
C) a correlational effect.
D) a simple comparison effect.
Q3) Briefly describe the analysis that are done to interpret the results of complex designs when an interaction effect is present and when an interaction effect is not present.
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Chapter 9: Single-Case Research Designs
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Q1) In a multiple-baseline design,the target behavior should change
A) just before the onset of the treatment.
B) long before the onset of the treatment.
C) just after the onset of the treatment.
D) long after the onset of the treatment.
Q2) A serious problem of interpretation can arise in the ABAB design when
A) performance in the second baseline period does not reverse, that is, return to the level in the initial baseline period.
B) performance in the initial baseline period is too high or too low.
C) performance in the second baseline period is worse than it was in the initial baseline period.
D) performance improves to the same degree in both intervention periods.
Q3) Problems of observer bias can arise in the context of a case study because
A) extraneous variables are often uncontrolled.
B) the nomothetic approach is especially prone to observer bias.
C) case studies typically involve unobtrusive observation.
D) the researcher is often both observer and participant.
Q4) Describe the common features that are present in both ABAB and multiple-baseline experimental designs.
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Chapter 10: Quasi-Experimental Designs and Program Evaluation
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Q1) At a large university,a group of education specialists tested the effectiveness of a new academic improvement course.Students seeking help at the university counseling center because of academic difficulties were asked to participate in this 4-week program.Only students who were judged to be deficient in reading comprehension and other study-related skills were chosen for the program.Students who sought help at the counseling center for emotional difficulties were included in the study as a comparison group.These students received the usual treatment offered at the counseling center.A group of 30 students completed the academic-improvement program at the counseling center.Average test grades from the students' courses for the two groups were compared before (midterm exams)and after (final exams)the program.Analyses revealed that a statistically significant majority of the students were doing better in school after completing the academic-improvement program than before. Identify and describe two threats to internal validity in this study.That is,show why there are at least two plausible alternative hypotheses for the obtained change in grades other than due to the academic-improvement program.
Q2) Why is the nonequivalent control group design superior to the one-group pretest-posttest design in terms of controlling for threats to internal validity?
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Chapter 11: Data Analysis and Interpretation: Part
Idescribing Data, confidence Intervals, correlation
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Q1) Which of the following is not a major stage of data analysis?
A) getting to know the data
B) confirming what the data reveal
C) transforming the data
D) summarizing the data
Q2) To find the value of t critical for a repeated measures design,we calculate degrees of freedom based on the
A) number of scores obtained.
B) number of scores obtained minus one.
C) number of pairs of scores minus one.
D) size of the group.
Q3) Having calculated a 95% confidence interval for a single population mean we may state that the odds are 95/100 that the A) population mean equals 95.
B) sample mean is the same as the population mean.
C) obtained interval contains the population mean.
D) population mean falls in the interval.
Q4) Explain the phrase,"Correlation does not imply causation."
Page 13
Q5) Why is a confidence interval also called a "margin of error"?
Q6) What does the "95" in a 95% confidence interval refer to?
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Chapter 12: Data Analysis and Interpretation: Part Iitests of
Significance and the Analysis Story
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Q1) If the omnibus analyses of variance for a complex design reveals a statistically significant interaction effect,the source of the interaction effect may be identified using simple main effects analysis and,when there are more than two levels of an independent variable,also
A) complex comparisons.
B) null comparisons.
C) simple correlations between variables.
D) comparisons between two means.
Q2) Suppose the omnibus analysis of variance for a 2 * 2 complex design reveals only a statistically significant main effect of one independent variable.To understand the effect of this variable the researcher should
A) compute simple main effects analyses.
B) use t-tests to compare two means at a time.
C) examine the means for the independent variable collapsed across the other independent variable.
D) all of these
Q3) Briefly describe the logic of the analysis of variance or F-test for a single-factor random groups design.
Q4) What does NHST tell us when a "statistically significant" finding is obtained?
Page 15
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Chapter 13: Communication in Psychology
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Q1) The second page of a formal,written research manuscript prepared according to APA format is the
A) Introduction.
B) Title page.
C) Author Notes.
D) Abstract.
Q2) Perhaps the most common type of graph in psychology journals is the A) line graph.
B) frequency polygon.
C) frequency distribution.
D) pie chart.
Q3) A written research proposal,unlike the report of a completed research study,generally will not include
A) a Method section.
B) an Appendix.
C) an Abstract.
D) any reference to statistics.
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