Answers to Research Methods Worksheet

1. Answers to Research Methods Worksheet 2012-13 Chamberlain AP Psychology

2. 1. What does the researcher in our sample experiment on memory and caffeine need to do in order to ensure that the participants in the study do not know if they are in the control or experimental group? Choose all that apply Run a double-blind procedure Run a single blind procedure Use the placebo method Give everyone in both groups a drink (1/2 get caffeinated bev., ½ get non-caffeinated bev.) Reduce the demand characteristics Eliminate social desirability effect by keeping tests anonymous • Single-blind procedure ensures participants do not know if they are getting the caffeine thereby reducing placebo effect. • By giving all participants a drink, nobody knows if she/he is getting the “treatment” (even if they do not know the purpose of the study, simply by being asked to drink something before they take the memory test might affect how they approach) • Demand characteristics are cues to participants about the nature of the research (the hypothesis, the IV, the DV); these cues can skew dependent variable! • It is unlikely that a test of memory would have anything to do with trying to give the socially desirable answer, therefore F does not apply. • I did not ask how they could design the study to eliminate experimenter bias, so a double-blind is not necessary.

3. 2.In order to determine that their results are statistically significant, what are 2 situation-relevant and 2 participant-relevant confounding variables that they would need to control? situation-relevant: (factors about the experimental setting) rooms in which people test must be same (same temperature, same setting, same audio/visual stimuli) people administering test should be similar participant-relevant: (factors about the participants that could affect dependent variable) people taking part in both groups should have had same amount of sleep night before People taking part in both groups should be in similar psychological state (nobody who is sick, just had a relative die, just got a brain injury)

4. 3. Imagine that instead of testing the effects of caffeine on memory test performance, the researchers were testing a new PKM zeta pill and how it affects memory performance. Explain how and why the researchers should include the placebo method in their experimental design in order to ensure that their results are statistically significant. • HOW to do placebo method: • Give all people a pill or injection of some sort • Control group gets pill/injection that is benign (non-active, sugar pill) • Experimental group gets the PKM zeta pill • NOTE: Placebo method should always be double-blind! • WHY placebo method and double-blind? • Research has shown that when people think they are receiving a treatment (say a pill to improve memory or one to decrease pain or anxiety or depression) their mind will temporarily fool the body into showing signs of being cured. This is called the placebo effect. • To ensure that the pill is actually effective, the experimental group should show better memory performance than the control group. This should be double-blind because if researchers know who is getting the test drug, they might unintentionally skew data in order to get desired results.

5. 4. Why would the researchers want to use group matching when creating the experimental and control groups? • Group matching is a way of creating groups that ensures the groups are balanced in terms of gender, race, age, or some other criterion that might affect the data. • For what criteria would they want to group match? • Gender. • Would they use group matching after or before collecting the baseline data? • The baseline data should not matter since they are looking at each individual’s before and after treatment scores; they are NOT trying to show one group as a whole is better at memory tests than the other. • How would the researchers perform group matching? • After identifying the sample population, create group A boys and group B girls. From those groups, randomly assign ½ the boys to the control group and ½ the boys to the experimental group. Do the same for the girls. • When doing group matching, do the researchers still have to use random assignment? Why or why not? YES!!! Random assignment ensures that the groups are not stacked.

6. Field Experiment What operational definitions would the researchers need to provide for their dependent variable? what is bullying? (what would bullies actually be saying, doing) what is a reaction? (a look, a pause, coming to help, turning away, walking right past?) how is it clear to bystanders that man is blind? (cane, dark glasses, guide dog?) How can the researchers do stratified sampling for the experiment with the “bullied blind man”? stratified sampling ensures that different sub-groups within a population are represented according to their proportions within society e.g. If black people make up 14% of the US population, than 14% of the people being studied should be black. They could do this by staging their experiment in different neighborhoods in the city.

7. Which design is being used in the following studies? • Answers: • Bb. Because it would be nearly impossible to control for all of the confounding variables, this is best identified as a correlation study. • Research question: How does exposure to particulate matter in smog affect neural development as it relates to intelligence? • Confounding variables: How the children are raised, quality of education system for each child, nutrition, IQ of parents, mother’s intake of other toxins during pregnancy (e.g. drugs, alcohol, smoking), how often the kids are outside, if air quality changes in any of the cities over the 25 years... • Basic research A. Neuropsychologists want to determine how exposure to particulate matter in smog affects neural development as it relates to intelligence. Procedures: They measure the air quality in 10 different cities, and take a random sample an ex post facto group of women pregnant in their 10th weeks to create their population of children to follow. 5 of the cities in which the study population live have air quality levels considered hazardous; 5 of the cities have “clean air”. The psychologists give the children of these mothers IQ tests at age 3, 6, 10, and 25. Cross-sectional Longitudinal study Cohort sequential Experiment Correlation Case study Naturalistic observation Bonus questions: What is the research question in the above study? What confounding variables would have to be controlled to ensure the cause-effect relationship of the smog and IQ of the children in the sample population? Would it be reasonable for researchers to control for all of those variables? Is this applied or basic research?

8. Which design is being used in the following studies? B. A developmental psychologist wants to know if the incidences, length, and severity of temper tantrums correlates with a person’s age. Procedures: Place video cameras in 1000 homes, filming 24/7 for 1 month. 25% of the homes are filming people above age 60; 25% of the homes filming people between 30-59; 25% between 2-10; 25% between 11-29. The psychologists watch the films, record in their data the frequency, severity, and lengths of tantrums. • Answers: • Cb. • Operational definitions: What is a temper tantrum? What is the scale for severity? How do you measure the length (what is considered beginning vs. end of tantrum?) • Confounding variables: Adults might modify their behavior because they are aware of the cameras; parents might modify their parenting and effect frequency of children’s tantrums; time of year (summer break vs. holiday vs. ordinary week) • Basic research Cross-sectional Longitudinal study Cohort sequential Experiment Correlation Case study Naturalistic observation Bonus questions: What terms would need to be operationally defined? What confounding variables would have to be controlled to ensure that the data accurately reflects tantrum behavior of the subjects? Is this applied or basic research?

9. Who participates in studies and how are participants chosen? Population: The pool of people from whom the random or representative sample is generated for a study. Representative sample: A sample obtained in such a way that it reflects the distribution of important variables in the larger population in which the researchers are interested -- variables such as age, income level, ethnicity, and geographic distribution. Random sampling: A sample group of subjects selected by chance (without biased selection techniques). Random assignment: Each subject of the sample has an equal likelihood of being chosen for the experimental group of an experiment. ex post facto: study participants chosen based upon having a pre-existing condition • Answers • Identify population of study groups: teenagers between 13-19 • and people over the age of 60 • Create representative sample by reproducing the study in various neighborhoods in order to measure reaction of people of varying socioeconomic and racial characteristics • Random sampling, random assignment, and ex post facto are not relevant to this research project • IV: person being attacked by mugger • DV: bystanders reaction • Operational definitions: • Define “help” • Define “attacked by mugger” • Define age parameters of teenage group • Define whether bystanders are in groups or alone • Identify characteristics of populations of neighborhoods where experiment will take place Group challenge (1 piece of paper per group): Using each of the terms on the left, identify how you would create the research study group to test the following hypothesis: Hypothesis: Teenagers are more likely than people over age 60 to stop and help a person who is being attacked by a mugger. What are the independent and dependent variables in this study? What terms would need operational definitions?

10. Who participates in studies and how are participants chosen? Population Representative sample Random sampling Random assignment Which of the above procedures in designing a research project is being violated in the following scenario? How so? Mrs. Smith believes that teens at her school are having less sex than they were 10 years ago. She decides to give her AP Physics students an anonymous survey asking them questions about their own sexual history. She doesn’t want to have to compile data from 100 students so she decides to only include the students who have never been tardy in the survey. She compiles the data and compares it to the data that was generated 10 years ago by a teacher of a class called “Parenting skills 101.” Random sampling (her class is not a random selection from the student body) Because there is no control group, random assignment does not matter. Because she is comparing teens to teens, she does not need to do a representative sample. (For example, she did not say “white teens” vs. “black teens”)

11. Who participates in studies and how are participants chosen? Population Representative sample Random sampling Random assignment Which of the above procedures in designing a research project is being violated in the following scenario? How so? Mrs. Smith (our genius teacher) hypothesizes that students who are given a rubric before a writing project will score better than those who are not. She assigns her favorite students to the experimental group and the rest to the control group. Answer: Violating random assignment!