CRA Research Design & Methodology 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which threat to internal validity occurs when participants in a control group seek alternative treatments because they know they are not receiving the intervention?
- Maturation
- Instrumentation
- Compensatory rivalry (Correct answer)
- Testing effect
Correct answer: Compensatory rivalry
Compensatory rivalry (John Henry effect) happens when control group members try harder to compensate for not receiving the treatment.
Question 2: A Likert scale asking respondents to rate agreement from 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree' produces which level of measurement?
- Nominal
- Ordinal (Correct answer)
- Interval
- Ratio
Correct answer: Ordinal
Likert scales produce ordinal data because the categories are ranked but the distances between points are not necessarily equal.
Question 3: In hypothesis testing, a Type I error means:
- Failing to reject a false null hypothesis
- Rejecting a true null hypothesis (Correct answer)
- Using an incorrect statistical test
- Selecting an unrepresentative sample
Correct answer: Rejecting a true null hypothesis
A Type I error (false positive) occurs when the null hypothesis is incorrectly rejected despite being true.
Question 4: Which qualitative method involves the researcher immersing themselves in a community to observe behavior in its natural context?
- Depth interviews
- Focus groups
- Ethnography (Correct answer)
- Content analysis
Correct answer: Ethnography
Ethnography requires prolonged immersion in the social setting to understand behavior from the participants' perspective.
Question 5: The term 'blind' in a double-blind experiment refers to which parties being unaware of treatment assignment?
- Only the participants
- Only the researchers administering the treatment
- Both the participants and the researchers (Correct answer)
- Neither participants nor researchers
Correct answer: Both the participants and the researchers
In a double-blind design, both participants and the researchers interacting with them are unaware of who received which treatment, reducing bias.
Question 6: A research question asks whether income level predicts consumer spending. Income is the:
- Dependent variable
- Control variable
- Moderating variable
- Independent variable (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Independent variable
The independent variable (income) is the predictor used to explain or predict the dependent variable (spending).
Question 7: What does 'statistical power' refer to in research?
- The probability of correctly rejecting a false null hypothesis (Correct answer)
- The probability of making a Type I error
- The strength of correlation between two variables
- The size of the sample relative to the population
Correct answer: The probability of correctly rejecting a false null hypothesis
Statistical power is the probability that a study will detect an effect when one truly exists, i.e., avoid a Type II error.
CRA Research Design & Methodology 3
Which threat to internal validity occurs when participants in a control group seek alternative treatments because they know they are not receiving the intervention?