Questions
1. What is the difference between an independent and a dependent variable? Describe both terms.
2. Study both definitions of the term performance-motivation, as given below.
Someone gets assigned the task to build a tower of matches. Performance-motivation refers to the number of attempts someone tries, before he or she quits.
Performance-motivation is the ability to set yourself to do a certain performance.
Are these definitions conceptual or operational?
3. What does ‘correlational research’ mean?
4. A researcher wants to examine to what extent giftedness of children at secondary school coincides with behavioral problems in the class. What kind of research is suitable to examine this question?
5. What is the form of statistics called, that focuses on drawing conclusions?
6. Someone claims about a certain variable that the score of Elise is twice as large als the score of Adriaan. Which level of measurement should the variable at least have to be able to make certain claims?
7. In a study, the variable intelligence is measured as:
1 = IQ below 70
2 = IQ between 71 and 90
3 = IQ between 91 and 110
4 = IQ between 111 and 120
5 = IQ higher than 120
Which level of measurement does this variable hold?
8. In a study, the connection between gender, age and cognitive abilities is examined. Which of these variables can exclusively play a role as independent variable in psychological research?
Answers
1. What is the difference between an independent and a dependent variable? Describe both terms.
An independent variable is a variable that is being manipulated by the researcher. Often, this exists of two conditions to which the participants are exposed. The dependent variable is a variable that is observed, after the independent variable is manipulated.
2. Study both definitions of the term performance-motivation, as given below.
Someone gets assigned the task to build a tower of matches. Performance-motivation refers to the number of attempts someone tries, before he or she quits.
Performance-motivation is the ability to set yourself to do a certain performance.
Are these definitions conceptual or operational?
Definition I is operational.
Definition II is conceptual.
3. What does ‘correlational research’ mean?
With this type of study, the association between variables is studied. With correlational studies, no claims can be made about cause-and-effect relationships.
4. A researcher wants to examine to what extent giftedness of children at secondary school coincides with behavioral problems in the class. What kind of research is suitable to examine this question?
Correlational research
5. What is the form of statistics called, that focuses on drawing conclusions?
Inferential statistics.
This method assumes that the independent variable has had a certain effect, if the difference between the means of the conditions is larger than expected based upon coincidence only. Therefore, we compare group means that we found with group means that we would have expected if there would only be some error variance. Unfortunately, this method does not provide certainty. Only a chance can be determined, which implies that the differences in group means are the result of error variance.
6. Someone claims about a certain variable that the score of Elise is twice as large als the score of Adriaan. Which level of measurement should the variable at least have to be able to make certain claims?
Ratio
7. In a study, the variable intelligence is measured as:
1 = IQ below 70
2 = IQ between 71 and 90
3 = IQ between 91 and 110
4 = IQ between 111 and 120
5 = IQ higher than 120
Which level of measurement does this variable hold?
Ordinal
8. In a study, the connection between gender, age and cognitive abilities is examined. Which of these variables can exclusively play a role as independent variable in psychological research?
Gender and age
