A psychologist conducts a research study and finds that children who are abused have more difficulty ...

A psychologist conducts a research study and finds that children who are abused have more difficulty in school than children who are not abused.
 
  a. Is this an experimental, correlational, cross-sectional, or longitudinal study? Justify your choice.
   b. Based on the study, the psychologist draws the conclusion that an abusive home life leads to poorer school performance in school. Is this conclusion justified? Why or why not?
  What will be an ideal response?

Ques. 2

Which one of the following statements about developmental research is true?
 
  a. Experimental studies can be conducted only in the laboratory and under somewhat artificial conditions.
  b. Longitudinal studies yield the most information for making decisions about how best to foster children's development.
  c. Experimental studies enable us to draw conclusions about cause-effect relationships.
  d. Correlational research is more difficult and time-consuming than experimental research.

Ques. 3

Teachers and administrators at a particular school are concerned about a possible rise in bullying in recent months. Before deciding how to respond to the problem, they want to determine if, in fact, their perceptions are accurate. For example, they want to know how many students are considered to be bullies, how many students are victims of bullying, and how often students encounter bullying incidents at school. In three separate paragraphs, describe three different data collection techniques they might use to get the information they need.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Ques. 4

A team of researchers wants to know whether a new crime prevention program is really effective in reducing crime in young adolescents. The researchers find two middle schools, Adams Middle School and Monroe Middle School, which serve similar kinds of students and report similar rates of theft, physical assault, and vandalism. The researchers implement the program at Adams and use Monroe as a control group. Afterwards, they discover that crime has decreased at Adams but not at Monroe. This study is a good example of which type of design?
 
  a. Correlational
  b. Experimental
  c. Cross-sectional
  d. Quasi-experimental

Ques. 5

Which one of the following statements best describes a quasi-experimental study?
 
  a. Participants are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups.
  b. Treatment and control interventions are administered to pre-existing groups.
  c. Researchers examine children's behaviors in educational settings rather than in laboratories.
  d. Researchers are less concerned about the validity and reliability of their measures than is true in experimental studies.

Ques. 6

Imagine that a researcher finds that, on average, students who weigh more are better athletes. Which one of the following is an appropriate conclusion from this information?
 
  a. Parents should feed their children as much as possible.
  b. The school cafeteria should decrease the fat content of the food it serves.
  c. On average, students who eat more become stronger and more agile.
  d. There is a correlation between weight and athletic performance.

Ques. 7

Which one of the following conclusions can be firmly drawn only from an experimental study?
 
  a. Children grow taller as they get older.
  b. Boys are more likely than girls to engage in physical aggression.
  c. Some drugs administered during pregnancy affect a child's prenatal development.
  d. Children's muscular coordination and physical endurance improve as they grow older.

Ques. 8

Dr. Fitz wants to know which of three health programs is most effective in promoting children's physical well-being. With the consent of both the children and their parents, children who regularly attend a community center are randomly assigned to one of three 8-week programs. After the programs have ended, Dr. Fitz assesses the children's general physical wellbeing. Dr. Fitz's study can best be classified as which one of the following?
 
  a. experimental
  b. correlational
  c. cross-sectional
  d. quasi-experimental

Ques. 9

Experimental research requires only one of the following. Which one is an essential component of an experimental study?
 
  a. Manipulating an aspect of the environment
  b. Being able to predict two or more variables
  c. Describing each variable in considerable detail
  d. Studying behavior in a laboratory rather than in a more naturalistic setting

Ques. 10

In which one of the following situations does a researcher definitely have a problem with the reliability of a data collection technique?
 
  a. Ms. Arthur assesses children's overall physical fitness on Monday; she then assesses it the following Monday. Children who perform well one week are not the same ones who perform well the following week.
  b. Mr. Benavidez uses a test of mechanical aptitude to determine which high school students are ready to take a calculus course. Later, he finds out that the students who got some of the lowest scores on the test are actually some of the best students in the calculus course.
  c. Mr. Candelaria distributes a questionnaire to a group of fifth graders without first obtaining their parents' permission.
  d. To determine the frequency with which young adolescents drink alcoholic beverages, Ms. D'Amato conducts two-hour, one-on-one interviews with a sample of 200 middle school students.

Ques. 11

If we say that a particular data collection method has high reliability, we mean that it:
 
  a. Yields scores that fall on a bell curve
  b. Yields similar results on different occasions
  c. Predicts future success in academic or social settings
  d. Accurately determines whether children have met certain predetermined developmental goals