Psychological Research II: Methods Assignment - Designing Appropriate Research Methods - P, Assignments of Psychology

Download Psychological Research II: Methods Assignment - Designing Appropriate Research Methods - P and more Assignments Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! PSYC 202 - Psychological Research II Methods Assignment #_____ Due: Choose Correct Design For each vignette below choose the appropriate "design" or methodology. Write the letter corresponding to the correct answer next to each description. If you feel that 2 are appropriate, put both. A Observation B Correlation C Survey D Quasi-experimental E Experiment: Between-Subjects or Independent groups F Experiment: Within-Subjects or Repeated measures G Complex Experiment: All variables Between-Subjects/Independent groups H Complex Experiment: All variables Within-Subjects/Repeated measures I Complex Experiment: Mixed design J Case Study K Small-N: Reversal design ______1. A developmental psychologist investigated memory performance among 2nd and 6th graders as a function of story coherence. Specifically, two types of stories were prepared that were identical except that events in one story were logically ordered according to a theory of memory organization whereas events in the second type of story were arranged such that the natural order of the story was disrupted. The investigator believed that younger children would remember less overall than older children, and that the logically disrupted story would be harder to recall than the ordered story. However, the investigator believed that the effect of the logical order variable would be less in the older children than in the younger ones. Forty 2nd graders and 40 6th graders were randomly assigned to each of the logical order conditions (a total of 160 subjects). The children were tested individually with the stories presented auditorially using a tape recorder. Children were asked to recall the story orally after the presentation. ______2. A psychologist investigates the response of 20 different 4-year-old boys to being separated from their mothers. A mother and child are brought into a large playroom. The child is allowed to play by himself for 10 minutes. At that time, the mother is signaled by the psychologist to get up and leave the room. The psychologist observes the child through a one-way mirror, recording everything the child does for the next 5 minutes. ______3. A psychologist used a group of 60 schizophrenic patients in this study. Only males who were under 60 years of age, had been on medication less than 10 years, and who were in good physical health were included in the study. Once the 60 patients were identified, each was randomly assigned to one of 5 different treatment groups. ______4. A brief questionnaire asking about their employment status was mailed to all 682 students that graduated in the last two years from a small college. A total of 504 completed questionnaires were returned. The results revealed that 88% of the graduates were employed in a field of their choice and that the average time reported to obtain a first job after graduation was 1.2 months. The registrar was quite happy, and interpreted the data to indicate that at his college nearly 9 out of 10 graduates were successfully employed within fewer than 6 weeks. ______5. A researcher was interested in whether scores on a particular test related to job performance. All employs at an organization were given an employment/ability test. Six months later each supervisor was required to rate their employees' job performance on a scale of 1 to 10, where a rating of 1 represented extremely poor job performance and a rating of 10 indicated superior job performance. The researcher then looked at the relationship between the test and job performance. ______6. A researcher was interested in comparing two different teaching methods in kindergarten classes. One method was used at School A during the fall semester and the other method was used at School B during the fall. At the end of the fall semester, the researcher administered several standardized tests to assess preschool or kindergarten-level performance to both groups of students. ______7. A researcher tested the spelling abilities of 5th grade children from city versus suburban schools. One hundred children from city schools and 100 children from suburban schools were randomly selected. Standardized test scores in the files of the students were used to find pairs of students (one from a city and one from a suburban school) who were nearly identical on reading comprehension scores. The investigator obtained 50 pairs of children in this way. The 50 children from the city schools and the 50 children from the suburban schools were then given a specially prepared spelling test. ______8. A researcher wanted to study how the creation of mental images affects retention. A long list of unrelated words was presented to the subjects, with each word being presented one at a time. Half of the words were words that would be easy to form mental images of, and the other half were words that would be difficult to form a mental image of. The subjects were told to create vivid mental images of each word to help them remember the words better. After all the words were presented, the subjects had to write down as many of the words as they could, in any order they wished. ______9. A group of researchers studied the effect of mood on learning and retention. They hypothesized that subjects would notice events in stories that matched their moods and would remember such events better than events that did not match their moods. By posthypnotic suggestion they made their subjects either happy or sad (random assignment of subjects to happy or sad groups). Then they had the subjects read a story. The story was about two men, Andre and Jack. Everything connected with Andre in the story was happy, and everything connected to Jack was sad. After the subjects finished reading the story, they were brought out of the hypnotic state and released. The next day, when subjects were in a neutral mood, they were asked to remember as much of the story as they could. The experimenters found that subjects remembered more facts connected with the character whose mood matched their own at the time they read the story. ______10. A researcher interested in the behavior of field mice observes their behavior from a distance using a powerful telescope. There are four fields near the university that contain colonies of mice. On each observation day, six 15-min periods during the day are randomly selected from the times when the daylight is sufficient to permit her to see the mice. She makes written descriptions of many activities of the mice. Later, she organizes the behavioral descriptions according to well-defined categories of behavior. ______11. All of the children from the 6th grade of a public school are asked about the number of hours that they watch TV each week. The researcher hypothesized that the # of hours of TV would be related to the percent grade in different subjects. ______12. A behavior therapist seeks to reduce the frequency of hitting behavior exhibited by a 6-year-old child in a classroom for emotionally disturbed children. The therapist trains one of the teacher's aides to reward the child with small candy reinforcers when the child has not struck anyone for a period of 5 minutes. The number of times the child strikes other children or the teacher is counted during two 1-hour sessions each weekday for a period of 1 week. The following week the aide uses the reinforcement procedure continuously and behavior is observed as described above for a week. The third week, the aide does not use the