Home

Chapter 11

Practice Test

Practice Test

The following questions will help you to assess your comprehension of chapter 11

This activity contains 28 questions.

	When attrition occurs at random and equally in the different groups, it is not a serious problem.    True  False

	The terms generalizability and external validity are interchangeable terms    True  False

	Using control groups beginning at the developmental stage does not eliminate maturation effects on internal validity.    True  False

	Giving students a pretest may in some cases affect the posttest.    True  False

	A variable exhibiting a ceiling or floor effect is unlikely to correlate with other variables, making false negative errors likely.    True  False

	An example of a good topic to study would be whether blacks and whites have equal opportunities to go to college.    True  False

	When group differences are substantial, selection bias can never be ruled out as an alternative explanation for any findings    True  False

	On average very bright children have parents who are on average brighter than themselves.    True  False

	Any measure of human aptitudes or attitudes has some random variability    True  False

	It is possible for a study to be high in internal validity, but low in external validity.    True  False

	It is important at the beginning of a study to select samples that are atypical.    True  False

	Many published experimental studies are conducted in actual laboratory settings, or more typically, in classrooms for very short periods under unusual conditions.    True  False

	Longer studies are automatically better than shorter ones    True  False

	We can rarely know if what we are observing would be the same if we were not observing it.    True  False

	A series of snow days in the middle of a study is an example of which type of threat to internal validity?   Testing effects History School effects mortality

	If you gave a 50-item test and half of the scores fell between 45 and 50, you would have ______________ effects.   Testing Floor Instrumentation ceiling

	What is the most common cause for low internal validity?   Teacher effects Instrumentation maturation Selection bias

	What type of problems often come up when two groups that have been selected on the basis of one test are compared to one another?   Class effects Selection bias Statistical regression Hawthorne effect

	What does research in schools often suffer from?   School effects Teacher effects All of the above Class effects

	When doing survey research, which external factor is particularly important?   artificiality Lack of internal validity reactivity representativeness

	If a researcher was doing a study to investigate approaches to foreign language instruction, which language would be the best for him/her to study?   Spanish German Japanese Chinese

	What is considered the most common problem of external validity in educational research?   artificiality Hawthorne effect John Henry effect nonrepresentativeness

	In research in schools, ________________ is a particular problem, because teachers, principals, and other staff often have a substantial interest in looking good to outsiders and may have a strong stake in one or another outcome of a research project.   reactivity artificiality Lack of internal validity nonrepresentativeness

	If some teachers in a school have been randomly assigned to us a new method while others continue with their usual methods, the teachers in the untreated group might double their efforts to look better. What is this an example of?   artificiality nonrepresentativeness reactivity Lack of internal validity

	If you were to do a study in your own school, would you think keeping internal or external validity would be more of a problem? In addition, specifically which threat would you be the most concerned about?   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

	If you were to do a study on two of your classes using two different methods of instruction. Both of your classes are equal on academic achievement, but one class has four troublemakers in it. Explain what type of threat this would have to your external validity.   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

	Is it possible to eliminate John Henry and Hawthorne effects when conducting a study? How would you do this?   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

	Be the Gremlin. Find threats to internal and external validity in the following studies. a). A teacher wanted to study the effects of a new reading program with his fourth grade class. He created an experimental and control group. He worked one on one with each student in the experimental group for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, he gave both groups the same reading test and compared the two scores. b). A principal wanted to study the students' motivation towards learning at the beginning of the school year and at the end of the school year. He gave the same questionnaire to seniors and to freshman.   To create paragraphs in your essay response, type <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, and </p> at the end.

Copyright © 1995 - 2010 Pearson Education . All rights reserved. Pearson Allyn & Bacon is an imprint of Pearson . Legal Notice | Privacy Policy | Permissions