Psychology 307, Spring 99                 Name _______________________
Stephen R. Schmidt, Ph. D.

TEST  3

I.  Identification:  In one or two sentences define each of the following.

 1) nonequivalent before-after design:
 
 
 

 2) closed system:
 
 
 

 3) interrupted time series design:
 
 
 

4) reversal design:
 
 
 

5) multi-element design:
 
 
 

6) intersubject replication:
 
 
 

7) institutional review board:
 
 
 

8) informed consent:
 
 
 

9) inquiry:
 
 
 

10) publication lag:
 
 II.  Short answer:  (10 points each.)

1.     a)  Give me two reasons why it is difficult to infer causation from
 correlational research?

         1.

         2.

b)  We discussed three methods used to increase our ability to make causal inferences from correlational research:  cross-lagged-panel correlations, partial correlations, and multiple correlations.  Choose one of these methods, describe it, and discuss how it increases our information regarding causation in correlational studies.
 

2.  You are concerned that you have had too many cold viruses in the past year.  You would like to determine if a vitamin supplement program might reduce the number of colds you have in the future.  Design an experiment to determine if taking vitamin supplements leads to a decrease in the number of colds you (single subject) have in a year.  Choose a design that rules out as many threats to validity as you can.  Describe the design, provide some hypothetical results, and discuss the strengths and weakness of the design with respect to internal and external validity.
 

3.  What are quasi-experiments?  Show how these experiments differ in terms of their threats to internal validity (e.g., choose several designs, and show how the designs are susceptible to different threats).
 
 

4.  Distinguish between ideographic and nomothetic approaches to psychology.  From a nomothetic tradition, what can case studies tell us about psychological processes?  Give an example.
 

 5.  Consider the following research proposal.  What ethical principles are not being followed?  What could the researcher do to make the study more ethical?

This research is concerned with eyewitness identification.  The experiment is conducted in a fast-food outlet during regular operating hours.  All employees are carefully rehearsed regarding the staged crime.  The "crime" is committed by an actor who enters the store displaying an unloaded handgun and demands all the money from the cash register.  He tells the employees not to call the police and, in making his getaway, shouts to the customers "the first one out the door is going to get ëblown away.í"  Directly after the "thief" leaves, the researcher and his associates enter the store with a questionnaire that is distributed to the patrons.  Each patron is debriefed concerning the nature of the experiment and the relevance to social issues.