Unit B: Exercises in Psychological Testing

Part I: Practice Exercises

The purpose of these exercises is to facilitate the student's independent thought,

reasoning, and conceptual clarity.

Steps:

1) The teacher gives a brief orientation/background about these exercises.

2) Each student thinks of and writes down possible answers to the questions.

3) Batch-wise discussion of answers written by the students facilitated by the teacher.

4) Evaluation of batch-derived answers.

Practice Exercise 1

How would you experimentally test a professor's belief "Lectures in the morning are more

effective than lectures in the afternoon"?

Questions and Answers:

1. State the Null hypothesis (Ho) for a directional and non-directional alternative

Hypothesis.

Ans : Null Directional Hypothesis (Ho): The effectiveness of lectures delivered in the morning

and the afternoon would be equal or the effectiveness of the lectures delivered in the morning are

less than one in the afternoon.

Null Non-Directional Hypothesis (Ho): There is no difference in the effectiveness of the

lectures delivered in the morning and in the afternoon.

2. State the Alternative hypothesis (Hà): directional and non-directional)

Ans : Alternate Directional Hypothesis (Ha): Lectures delivered in the morning are more

effective than lectures delivered in the afternoon.

Alternate Non-Directional Hypothesis (Ha): There is a difference in the effectiveness of

lectures delivered in the morning and afternoon.

3. What is the I.V.? How would you operationally define the I.V.? (Since more than one answer

is possible, think of 3 or 4 different operational definitions)

And : I.V. - Timing of the lecture

Operational Definition: Morning lectures are delivered at 7AM and the afternoon are delivered

at 12PM.

4. How would you operationally define the D.V.? How would you measure the effect of the I.V.?

(More than one answer possible; think of 3 or 4 different operational. definitions)

Ans : D.V. - Effectiveness of the lecture

Operational Definition: A test will be conducted in order to measure the effectiveness of the

lecture when it is conducted in morning and in afternoon.

5. Which experimental design would you use: Random groups design or a repeated measures

design? Why? State the pros and cons of each.

Ansn : Experimental Design: Random Group Design

The Design of the experiment is Random Group Design. This design has been applied to study

the effectiveness of lectures delivered in the Morning 7 Am and lectures delivered in the

afternoon 12 PM. Where the participants are divided into 2 groups and are to attend either only

the morning lecture or only the afternoon lecture. Random Group Design will make sure of not

having a practice effect and will not be over boarding on the participants.

The Repeated Group Design will have similar characteristics of participants so no individual

differences/effects.
6. What kind of controls would you maintain to avoid confounding?

Ans : Controls: Temperature of the room, location, duration of the topic, teaching methods, flow,

skills and qualifications, language of the lecture, match the participants for the same age group,

same intelligence, equal number of gender, difficulty level of the topic.

7. Would counterbalancing be necessary? When, why, and how would you use counterbalancing?

Ans :

Days Group 1 Group 2

Tuesday Morning Afternoon

Thursday Afternoon Morning

Groups Procedure

Group 1 Tuesday Morning and Thursday Afternoon

Group 2 Tuesday Afternoon and Thursday Morning

8. What would be the appropriate inferential statistical test for data analysis? Why?

Ans : If testing is to be done on two groups/ two conditions then t-test is conducted and more

than two groups/ two conditions then f-test/ANOVA is used. In this experiment, a t-test is

conducted.
Practice Exercise 2

How would you experimentally test a professor's belief "The use of humor during lectures

increases the students' interest in the topic"?

Questions and Answers:

1. State the Null hypothesis (Ho) for a directional and non-directional alternative hypothesis.

Ans : Null directional hypothesis: - The use of humor during lectures is equally or less effective

in increasing the students' interest in the topic.

Null non-directional hypothesis: - The use of humor during lectures does not affect the

students' interest in the topic.

2. State the Alternative hypothesis (H): directional and non-directional)

Alternative directional hypothesis: - The use of humor during lectures increases the students'

interest in the topic.

Alternative non-directional hypothesis: - An increase in students' interest in the topic has been

observed with the use of humor in the lecture.

3. What is the I.V.? How would you operationally define the I.V.? (Since more than one answer

is possible, think of 3 or 4 different operational definitions).

Ans : I.V. in this experiment is humor being used in the lecture. The operational definition for

this particular experiment is humor being used in the forms of relatable references to sitcoms,

cracking jokes, using words in a twisted or playful manner, and sharing funny past experiences.

4. How would you operationally define the D.V.? How would you measure the effect of the I.V.?

(More than one answer possible; think of 3 or 4 different operational definitions)

Ans. D.V. in this experiment is the student's interest in the topic being taught by the professor.

The effectiveness of the I.V. is measured by conducting a Post lecture test for both groups.

5. Which experimental design would you use: Random groups design or a repeated measures

design? Why? State the pros and cons of each.

Ans. Experimental Design: Random Group Design.

The Design of the experiment is Random Group Design. This design has been applied to study if

the humor used in the lecture increases students' interest in the topic. Where the participants are

divided into 2 groups and are to attend either only the lecture where humor is used or only that

lecture where humor is not used. Random Group Design will make sure of not having a practice

effect and will not be over boarding on the participants.

The Repeated Group Design will have similar characteristics of participants so no individual

differences/effects.

6. What kind of controls would you maintain to avoid confounding?

Ans. To avoid confounding variables, the kind of controls we can maintain is the Duration of the

lectures, methods of teaching, the flow of lecture, language used to teach in the lectures, the

difficulty of the subject/topic chosen to be used for teaching the participant, by choosing the

students with similar qualifications and equal/similar intelligence, by making sure all the

participants belong to the same age group and by having an equal number of males and females

as a participant.
7. Would counterbalancing be necessary? When, why, and how would you use counterbalancing?

Ans. Yes, counterbalancing would be necessary and we must provide a similar environment and

experience to both the groups of participants

Days Day 1(Tuesday) Day 2 (Wednesday)

Humor being used in the Group 1 Group 2

class

Humor not being used in the Group 2 Group 1

class

8. What would be the appropriate inferential statistical test for data analysis? Why?

Ans. As there are only two groups in this experiment we will use T-test as an appropriate

inferential statistical test for data analysis.