UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

JUNE EXAM 2013

PSY2006F
RESEARCH IN PSYCHOLOGY 1
TIME: 2 HOURS TOTAL MARKS: 180

This examination paper below consists of THREE sections.

Please note that this examination question paper is printed on BOTH sides of the page.

CAREFULLY PLAN THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU SPEND ON EACH SECTION

INSTRUCTIONS

Answer the questions from each section in a SEPARATE BOOK. This is MOST
IMPORTANT. Please write on both sides of the pages in the examination answer book.

On the top right hand corner of the cover, clearly indicate the questions answered in each
book.

Please turn the page

 Section A
Quantitative Research Methods

Professor Johann Louw

Answer question 1, and then answer EITHER question 2 or question 3

Question1. Why don’t bystanders help in an emergency?

A person witnessing an emergency situation, particularly a frightening and dangerous one such as a
stabbing, is in conflict. There are obvious humanitarian norms about helping the victim, but there are
also rational and irrational fears about what might happen to a person who does intervene. Dr Darley
suspects that there are circumstances in which the norms favouring intervention may be weakened,
leading to people not to intervene in the situation. She thinks that when there are other people around
in such a situation, human beings are less likely to come to the victim’s assistance.

She designed a study in which university students were invited to participate in a discussion about
personal problems associated with university life. Eighty-nine students replied to the advertisement
that was placed all over campus. Individual appointments were made for them to come to the
Department of Psychology. When the student arrived, s/he was placed in a small room by him/herself,
with a communication system that enabled him/her talking to the other participants, who were all
confederates of the researcher. It was explained to them that the discussion would be held over the
intercom system, rather than face-to-face, in order to avoid embarrassment by preserving the
anonymity of the participants. During the course of the discussion, one of the other participants
(remember, a confederate of the researcher), underwent what appeared to be a very serious nervous
seizure or fit similar to epilepsy. During the fit it was impossible for the participant to talk to the other
discussants or to find out what, if anything, they were doing about the emergency. The researcher
measured (in seconds) how long it took for the participant to report the emergency, starting from when
the “victim” had the fit, and counting until the participant left the room to report the fit.

The researcher created three conditions for the study. By the researcher’s comments before the
experiment, and also by the number of voices heard to speak in the group discussion, the subject was
led to believe that the discussion group was one of three sizes:

 a two-person group (consisting of a person who would later have a fit and the real
participant),
 a three-person group (consisting of the person who would have a fit, the real participant, and
one other confederate of the researcher), or
 a six-person group (consisting of the person who would have the fit, the real participant, and
four other confederates). All the confederates' voices were tape-recorded.

The results were as follows:

 In a two-person group (participant + victim), it took an average of 52 seconds for the incident
to be reported;
 In a three-person group (participant + victim + one other), it took 93 seconds to report; and
 In a six-person group (participant + victim + four others), it took 166 seconds to report.

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Answer the following questions about this study.

a) Would you say this study is exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory? Why do you say so?
(3)
b) State the research hypothesis, and indicate whether you regard it as a causal hypothesis or
not. (3)
c) Look at the results: what would you conclude from this study? (2)
d) What is the unit of analysis in the study? (1)
e) What is the independent variable? (1)
f) What is the dependent variable? (1)
g) State the operational definitions for both the independent and the dependent variables. (4)
h) What do we mean by “debriefing” in the context of research ethics? Would you recommend
debriefing in this instance, and why? (4)
i) Someone says to Dr Darley that there is nothing in the description of the study about “random
assignment to conditions”. What would this refer to? How would you improve the study if in
fact this was absent from the design? (4)
j) What do we mean when we say that “the researchers controlled for ‘type of emergency’ as an
extraneous variable”? (2)
k) What would you say was the sampling method used by Dr Darley? Comment on how
appropriate you think it was for this study. (5)

TOTAL 30

Choose either 2 or 3 below, but NOT both. Your answer for each question should be
approximately TWO pages.

Question 2

In Donald Campbell’s “logic” of evaluating research designs, two forms of validity stand out: internal
and external validity. Discuss these two forms of validity, and explain how to judge each one. (30)

Question 3

Select FIVE research concepts from the list below, and explain briefly what you understand by it.
Illustrate with an example for each one.

a) The hypothetico-deductive cycle (a good example would be one that shows the cycle in
action; how it works)
b) Research paradigms
c) Purposive sampling
d) Informed consent as an ethical principle
e) External validity
f) Selection effects in a study as a threat to internal validity
(30)

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 Section B
Qualitative Research

Dr. Floretta Boonzaier

Answer any TWO of the following questions.

Your answer for each question should be approximately ONE to TWO pages

Question 1

Imagine you are a researcher working at a domestic violence intervention programme. The
Programme Director has asked you to conduct qualitative interviews with women who have been
abused by their intimate partners. The Director has requested that you write up a document
discussing your data collection method. In this document, remember to discuss in detail:

 Which type of qualitative interviews will you conduct with the women and why? (4)
 What issues do you have to consider when drawing up an interview guide? What
questions are you likely to include in your guide? (8)
 What steps will you take to prepare for the interviews? (7)
 What challenges do you anticipate? (5)
 What specialised skills do successful qualitative interviewers need? (6)
(30)

Question 2

The South African Council for Family Life has hired you as an independent researcher. You have
been asked to conduct research with domestic workers on family-life balance. You have decided to
conduct qualitative research rooted in the interpretative paradigm. Your task is to draft a proposal to
present to the Council in which you discuss in detail:

 The core elements of interpretative qualitative research (8)

 Your research question for the proposed study (2)
 Your qualitative sampling and recruitment procedures (4)
 How you will collect qualitative data (4)
 How you plan to analyse your qualitative data (8)
 What is the significance of the research (4)
(30)

Question 3

In the past, some scholars have argued that focus groups are inappropriate for use when researching
sensitive topics. Now that you have read the Överlien, Aronssan and Hydén (2005) article, you know
that this is not always the case.

Imagine you are an Honours student conducting research with adolescent women and men on their
ideas about gender, sexuality and relationships. You have decided to use focus groups as a means of
data collection. Discuss in detail:

 What are the advantages of using focus groups according to Överlien, Aronssan and
Hydén (2005)? (10)
 How do these advantages benefit your sensitive research with young people? (20)
(30)

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 Section C
Psychometrics
Michelle Hoogenhout

ANSWER ALL OF THE FOLLOWING 15 QUESTIONS.

1. Give an example of:

a) a structured test
b) a projective test (2)
2. Name two types of criterion validity. (2)
3. A new measure of neuroticism is developed. To test the measure’s validity, participant scores on
the new measure are correlated with their scores on two well-established measures; the General
Anxiety Questionnaire and the Test of Emotional Stability. Which two aspects of validity evidence
are being investigated here? (2)
4. List two factors that can influence a measure’s reliability. (2)
5. Explain what an ipsative test is. (2)
6. Give ONE way in which screening and diagnostic measures differ. (2)
7. Define operationalization. (2)
8. Name two different forced-choice item formats. (2)
9. John finds the correlation between equivalent forms of a test that have different items.
a) What type of reliability is being evaluating here?
b) What is the source of error associated with this type of reliability? (2)
10. Define construct-irrelevant variance. (2)
11. Name two indices that are commonly reported in multi-cultural tests. (2)
12. What major contribution did Robert Yerkes make to psychometric testing during World War I? (2)

13. Briefly describe the difference in how James Cattell and Alfred Binet conceptualised and tested
intelligence. (6)
[30]

Answer any ONE of the following two questions. YOU DO NOT NEED TO ANSWER BOTH
QUESTIONS.

1. Discuss the main concept and test specifications that should be made when developing a new
measure. Pay particular attention to considerations that need to be made when developing multi-
cultural tests. (30)

2. What criteria can be made when determining whether a psychometric test is a good and useful
measure of a construct? (30)

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