Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. A researcher was interested in stress levels of lecturers during lecturers. She took the same group
of 8 lecturers and measured their anxiety (out of 15) during a normal lecture and again in a lecture in
which she had paid students to be disruptive and misbehave. Based on the SPSS output, how would
you interpret these results?
a. There were no significant differences between anxiety levels in normal lectures and in those in
which students misbehaved.
b. We can’t tell any of the above from the output given.
c. Anxiety levels were significantly higher in lectures in which students misbehaved.
d. Anxiety levels were significantly lower in lectures in which students misbehaved.
Ans: C
2. A psychologist was interested in whether there was a gender difference in the use of email. She
hypothesized that because women are generally better communicators than men, they would spend
longer using email than their male counterparts. To test this hypothesis, the researcher sat by the
email computers in her research methods laboratory and when someone started using email, she
noted whether they were male or female and then timed how long they spent using email (in minutes).
What should she report?
a. Females and males did not significantly differ in the time spent using email, t(14) = –1.90, p = .10.
b. Females and males did not significantly differ in the time spent using email, t(7.18) = –1.90, p =
.10.
c. Females spent significantly longer using email than males, t(14) = –1.90, p < .05.
d. Females and males did not significantly differ in the time spent using email, t(7.18) = –1.90, p <
.05, one-tailed.
Ans: B
3. A researcher was interested in the effects of emotion-evoking music on exam performance. Before
their SPSS exam, a lecturer took one group of students to a room in which calming music was being
played. A different group of students were taken to another room in which the ‘death march’ was
being played. The students then did the exam and their marks were noted. The SPSS output is below.
The experimenter made no predictions about which form of support would produce the best exam
performance. What should he report?
a. Marks for students receiving positive music before the exam did not significantly differ from
students receiving negative music, t(23.12) = 2.05, p = .052.
b. Students receiving positive music before the exam did significantly better than those receiving
negative music, t(38) = 2.05, p = .047.
c. Marks for students receiving positive music before the exam did not significantly differ from
students receiving negative music, t(38) = 2.05, p = .047.
d. Students receiving positive music before the exam did significantly better than those receiving
negative music, t(23.12) = 2.05, p < .05, one-tailed.
Ans: A
6. A researcher measured a group of people’s physiological reactions while watching horror films and
compared them to when watching comedy films. The resulting data were normally distributed. What
test should be used to analyse the data?
a. Independent t-test.
b. Mann–Whitney test.
c. Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
d. Paired-samples (dependent or related) t-test.
Ans: D
12. The degrees of freedom for the paired samples t-test are:
a. N 2
b. N 1
c. N 1
d. N
Ans: C
13. Participants rated their mood score out of 20 before and after listening to Reign in Blood by the
thrash metal band Slayer.
Before Listening to Slayer After Listening to Slayer
5 14
8 5
9 17
4 18
3 8
15 19
12 14
6 16
14. Participants rated their mood score out of 20 before and after listening to Reign in Blood by the
thrash metal band Slayer.
Before Listening to Slayer After Listening to Slayer
5 14
8 5
9 17
4 18
3 8
15 19
12 14
6 16
15. Exercise
A recent study investigated whether vodka is less likely to give you a hangover than wine. Twenty
participants on a night out were asked to drink only vodka for the whole evening then rate how they
felt the next day out of 10 (0 = I feel fantastic, 10 = I can't move my head in case it explodes). The
following month, they were asked to do the same again, only this time they were asked to drink only
white wine. The t-score was 2.56. Which of the sentences below is correct?
a. It is significant at the 1% level with a two-tailed test.
b. It is not significant with a two-tailed test.
c. It is significant at the 5% level but not the 1% level with a two-tailed test.
d. It is not significant with a one-tailed test.
Ans: C
18. Two samples of data are collected and the sample means calculated. If the samples come from the
same population, then:
a. Their means should be roughly equal.
b. Their means should differ significantly.
c. The experiment is unreliable.
d. The difference between the samples we have collected is likely to be larger than we would expect
based on the standard error.
Ans: A
19. Other things being equal, compared to the paired-samples (or dependent) t-test, the independent
t-test:
a. Is less robust.
b. Has less power to find an effect.
c. Has more power to find an effect.
d. Has the same amount of power, the data are just collected differently.
Ans: B