A psychologist wants to compare heterosexual women with lesbian women with respect to the length of time a love relationship lasts. She decides to compare 100 heterosexual women who are married with 100 lesbians who are currently in a love relationship. Without knowing anything more about this study, what might you suspect to be an important confounding variable?
a. The dependent variable is not clearly specified.
b. The heterosexual women are in a legally sanctioned relationship, whereas the lesbian women are not.
c. The study includes no male participants.
d. It is difficult to recruit participants for a study like this.
Question 2Imagine that a group of researchers want to determine whether there are gender differences in people's definition of an ideal friend. They distributed an identical questionnaire to females in 2010 and to males in 2011 . Which of the following would be a confounding variable in this study?
a. the gender of the participants
b. the items on the questionnaire
c. the operational definition of friend
d. the year in which the questionnaire was distributed
Question 3Suppose that a research group wants to see whether a new educational program has an effect on children's bias against children of the other gender. In this study, the experimental group takes part in an educational program about gender, and the control group takes part in a different educational program. Which of the following factorsif truewould most likely be the confounding variable?
a. All of the children in both conditions are European American.
b. The children in the gender-program condition are about one year older than the children in the control condition.
c. No teacher has ever discussed any gender-related issues with the class.
d. The children all live in the suburbs of Chicago.
Question 4Suppose that a researcher wants to see which gender is most helpful, men or women. The researcher parks a car with a flat tire on a road and tallies the number of men and women who stop to help. What would be an example of one confounding variable in this study?
a. The men are more likely than women to be familiar with fixing a flat tire.
b. The gender of the participants cannot be accurately determined.
c. The operational definition of helping has not been specified with precision.
d. The results probably depend upon the amount of traffic that passes by.
Question 5According to the discussion of research methods, the gender of the researcher who will conduct a study is especially important because
a. male researchers are more likely than female researchers to have biases against the female participants in the study.
b. males are more likely than females to read too quickly through the instructions in the study.
c. the participants may respond differently to a male researcher, compared to a female researcher.
d. male researchers are more likely than female researchers to have a graduate degree in psychology.
Question 6Which of the following statements describes a problem in conducting research about the psychology of women?
a. Researchers study women more often than men.
b. Psychologists typically do not conduct research with people who are economically poor or with people of color.
c. Psychologists have paid too much attention to research topics relevant to women (e.g., pregnancy) and too little attention to research topics relevant to men (e.g., aggression).
d. Most people are not especially interested in gender as a variable.
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