Research Methods in Psychology Questions and Answers
Psychology
Research Methods in PsychologyA health psychologist is interested in the
potential effect that a change in career focus
can have on cardiovascular disease for those
in high stress jobs. She chooses to study
divorce lawyers (a population that averages a
mean systolic blood pressure of 142 with a
standard deviation of 13) and measures the
blood pressure of 23 former divorce lawyers
who switched to environmental law. Those
23 lawyers have a mean systolic blood
pressure of 131. If all divorce lawyers
switched to environmental law, what would
you expect the mean systolic blood pressure
to be with 99% confidence?
Question 1
What is your point estimate for the mean
systolic blood pressure for divorce lawyers
who switch to environmental law?
Psychology
Research Methods in PsychologyConsider the following research study:
Participants were recruited to participate in a study to understand the impact of external cues and emotion. Although participants were fully informed of the study protocols and all gave consent, due to the nature of the study they were led to believe that the experiment was related to eye sight. Male participants were injected with epinephrine, a hormone that induces arousal including increased heartbeat, trembling, and rapid breathing. The research participants were told that they were being injected with a new medication to test their eyesight. The first group of participants was informed the possible side effects that the injection might cause while the second group of participants were not. The participants were then placed in a room with someone they thought was another participant but was actually a confederate (an actor) in the experiment. The confederate acted in one of two ways: euphoric or angry. Participants who had not been informed about the effects of the injection were more likely to feel either happier or angrier than those who had been informed.
Would this study be considered ethical by the standards upheld by Institutional Research Boards (such as IRB or IACUC)? Select the best answer.
Yes, it would be ethical.
No, it would not be ethical.
Psychology
Research Methods in PsychologyWhich of the following is an inaccurate statement about case studies? Select the best answer.
allows researchers to gather data from larger samples than may be afforded by other research methods
often used when studying individuals who are interesting to researchers because they have a rare characteristic
difficult to generalize observations from this type of research to the larger population as a whole
Psychology
Research Methods in PsychologyWhich of the following is considered a weakness of a case/clinical study? Select the best answer.
This design can be difficult to narrow down the participant pool to select a sample from.
Some case studies are not scientific, such as Freud who used case studies to develop many of his theories.
The data collected is surface in nature.
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