Exam 1 Topics

Experimental Design (M&J Ch 9)

• Key features of an experiment

Internal Validity (M&J Chapter 10 362-381)

• Define internal validity & know why it is important
• Internal validity vs external validity vs construct/measurement reliability vs
construct/measurement validity
• Threats to internal validity and to which type of study they apply (independent/ 2 group
design vs repeated measures/within-Ss design)
• Extraneous and confounding variables: which are problematic?
• Know how to minimize those threats

Probability (GWFW Ch 6 and Ch 7)

• Exclusive and non-exclusive events
• Dependent and independent events
• Addition Rule
• Multiplication Rule
• How probability relates to z-scores
• z-test: calculating z, determining probability of a particular mean

Sampling Distribution & z-test (GWFW Ch 8)

• Sampling error vs sampling bias
• Properties of the three distributions: sample, sampling distribution, population
• Effect of N on sampling distribution
• Central Limit Theorem
• Standard error

Hypothesis Testing (GWFW 8)

• Writing null and alternate hypotheses
• Type I and Type II error (M&J pp. 349-353)
• Defining and explaining importance of alpha α, β, power (also in M&J pp. 349-353)
• One-tailed or two-tailed: when alpha should be in 1 tail or ½ α in both tails
• Identifying areas on a distribution (sig/ ns, Retain/Reject H1 & H0)
• Defining “statistically significant”
• Interpreting study results: significant effect vs. large effect vs. important effect
• Confidence intervals: what are they and why do we use them
• Effect size, Cohen’s d
• Writing up your results APA style