Research Methods and Ethics Flashcards

When is deception ethically permissible in psychological research according to APA guidelines?

Answer: When the scientific value justifies it and a full debriefing follows

APA permits deception only when the research has significant scientific value, cannot be done otherwise, and participants are fully debriefed afterward.

In a factorial design with a 2×3 structure, how many conditions are there?

Answer: 6

A 2×3 factorial design has 2 levels of one factor and 3 levels of another, producing 2×3 = 6 conditions.

A study finds that ice cream sales and drowning rates both rise in summer. This is an example of what?

Answer: A spurious correlation due to a third variable

Both variables increase because of hot weather (a confound), not because one causes the other.

Which sampling method is most likely to yield a representative sample of U.S. adults?

Answer: Simple random sampling from a national registry

Simple random sampling gives every member of the target population an equal chance of selection, minimizing systematic bias.

What distinguishes a between-subjects design from a within-subjects design?

Answer: In between-subjects designs, different participants are in different conditions

Between-subjects designs assign different groups of participants to different conditions, unlike within-subjects where each person sees all conditions.

What is the main advantage of a within-subjects design over a between-subjects design?

Answer: It reduces variability by controlling for individual differences

Because the same participants serve in all conditions, individual difference variability is removed, increasing statistical power.

A researcher conducts 20 independent hypothesis tests with α = .05 and finds two significant results. What is the primary concern?

Answer: Familywise Type I error inflation

Running many tests increases the probability of false positives; corrections like Bonferroni are used to control familywise error rate.