experiemntal design 37 Part I. Research Methods Exercises 22. Learning Check-Exp
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experiemntal design
37 Part I. Research Methods Exercises 22. Learning Check-Experimental Designs ors o 1. A psychologist is interested in the effect of peer pressure on risk-taking behavi college students. The students (who volunteer to serve as participants) are ran In each situation, five are actually confederates of the experimenter (i.e., they ar behavior is determined before the experiment begins. other people in the room le of falling over backward in the ch confederates leaning back in their chairs but are further encouraged exhibit the same behavior (e.g., they tell the subjects that leaning back is e psychologist designs an experiment to determine this effect where 200 randomly placed in one of two situations. participants sit in a room with four other people. The four other people e part of the experiment), and their Half of the participants witness the four aning back in their chairs (a behavior that involves the minor risk air). The other half of the participants also witness the four by the confederates to more comfortable, avior of each participant is observed to determine whether they do or do not learn the number of participants (out of back in their chair during the experiment. For each group, five) who lean back in their chairs is recorded. a. List any independent variables in this study and the levels of each one. b. What is the dependent variable, and how is it being measured? c. What type of experimental design is this (e.g., bivalent, multivalent, or factorial)? 2. Explain why an experiment typically has higher internal validity but lower external validity than other research methods. 3. A research methods instructor wants to know if having students conduct their own research study as part of the course increases their understanding of major concepts in the course. To investigate this, she gives two sections of her course a pretest on the course concepts. She then gives one section a research study assignment for the course but does not give this assignment to her other section. At the end of the semester, she gives a posttest to both sections on the course concepts and compares the difference in the pretest-posttest scores as a measure of learning for the tw shows more learning. Explain why the instructor cannot be sure that the research ment caused more learning in this study o sections of her course. The section with the research study assignment study assign-Explanation / Answer
a. The independent variable in the given study would be Peer pressure and their are two levels of to this variable as there is an experimental group and a control group.
b. The dependent variable in the aforementioned study would be the risk taking behavior (leaning back in chair), which would be measured in terms of whether the college students give into the coaxing of the other 4 confederates and give into the risk taking behavior of tilting back in their chairs.
c. This is a bivalent experimental design as it has two groups and hence two levels in the independent variable.
2. This particular experiment showcases high internal validity as there aren't any confounding variables prevalent to vitiate the results of the study, but it showcases low external validity as it establishes a causal relationship on the basis of a small group that could have other factors motivating the behavior. Personality factors could be one such factor that could be playing a role in the motivation to display a certain kind of behavior. Hence, the results cannot be superimposed and generalized to the rest of the population. It has turned the phenomena into a dichotomy of display and no display on the basis of one factor.
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