MCQs
To be used in conjunction with Field, A. P., Miles, J., and Field, Z. C. (2012). Discovering statistics
using R: and sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. London: Sage. Questions are listed under the chapter
they best
...
MCQs
To be used in conjunction with Field, A. P., Miles, J., and Field, Z. C. (2012). Discovering statistics
using R: and sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. London: Sage. Questions are listed under the chapter
they best represent; however, they should not be given to students with the chapter numbers
indicated (or else it will make the answers to some questions fairly obvious!). Correct answers are
denoted with a *.
Chapter 1
1. What is a confounding variable?
a. A variable that is manipulated by the experimenter.
b. A variable that affects the outcome being measured as well as or instead of the
independent variable.*
c. A variable that has not been measured.
d. A variable that is made up only of categories.
2. A demand characteristic is:
a. A personality trait that makes a participant likely to find an experiment too
demanding.
b. A personality trait that affects the results of an experiment in an undesirable way.
c. When the experimenter’s behaviour affects the results of an experiment.
d. When a person responds in an experiment in a way that is consistent with their
beliefs about how the experimenter would like them to behave.*
3. ‘Children can learn a second language faster before the age of 7’. Is this statement:
a. A null hypothesis.
b. A non-scientific statement.
c. A two-tailed hypothesis.
d. A one-tailed hypothesis.*
4. An experimenter measured 30 children’s IQ. He then rank-ordered the children and
assigned them a score from 30 (most intelligent) to 1 (least intelligent) to create a new
variable. Does this new variable consist of:
a. Ordinal data.*
b. Nominal data.
c. Ratio data.
Prof. Andy Field
DSUR 1: MCQs 2
d. Interval data.
5. If a psychological test is valid, what does this mean?
a. The test will give consistent results.
b. The test measures what it claims to measure.*
c. The test has internal consistency.
d. The test measures a psychologically useful variable.
6. If my experimental hypothesis were ‘Eating cheese before bed affects the number of
nightmares you have’, what would the null hypothesis be?
a. Eating cheese before bed gives you more nightmares.
b. Eating cheese before bed gives you fewer nightmares.
c. The number of nightmares you have is not affected by eating cheese before bed.*
d. Eating cheese is linearly related to the number of nightmares you have.
7. If my null hypothesis is ‘Dutch people do not differ from English people in height’, what is
my alternative hypothesis?
a. Dutch people are taller than English people.
b. English people are taller than Dutch people.
c. Dutch people differ in height from English people.
d. All of the above are plausible alternative hypotheses.*
8. When items on a questionnaire appear to correspond to the construct that the
questionnaire claims to measure it is said to have:
a. Ecological validity.
b. Factorial validity.
c. Content validity.*
d. Criterion validity.
9. When questionnaire scores predict, or correspond with, external measures of the same
construct that the questionnaire measures it is said to have:
a. Ecological validity.
b. Factorial validity.
c. Content validity.
d. Criterion validity.*
10. When the results of an experiment can be applied to real-world conditions, that
experiment is said to have:
Prof. Andy Field
DSUR 1: MCQs 3
a. Ecological validity.*
b. Factorial validity.
c. Content validity.
d. Criterion validity.
11. A variable manipulated by a researcher is known as:
a. A dependent variable.
b. A confounding variable.
c. A discrete variable.
d. An independent variable.*
12. A variable that measures the effect of manipulating another variable is known as:
a. A dependent variable.*
b. A confounding variable.
c. A discrete variable.
d. An independent variable.
13. A predictor variable is another name for:
a. A dependent variable.
b. A confounding variable.
c. A discrete variable.
d. An independent variable.*
14. The discrepancy between the numbers used to represent something that we are trying to
measure and the actual value of what we are measuring is called:
a. Reliability.
b. Measurement error.*
c. The ‘fit’ of the model.
d. Variance.
15. What kind of variable is IQ, measured by a standard IQ test?
a. Categorical.
b. Discrete.
c. Nominal.
d. Continuous.*
Prof. Andy Field
DSUR 1: MCQs 4
16. A frequency distribution in which low scores are most frequent (i.e. bars on the graph are
highest on the left-hand side) is said to be:
a. Positively skewed.*
b. Leptokurtic.
c. Platykurtic.
d. Negatively skewed.
17. A frequency distribution in which high scores are most frequent (i.e. bars on the graph are
highest on the right-hand side) is said to be:
a. Positively skewed.
b. Leptokurtic.
c. Platykurtic.
d. Negatively skewed.*
18. A frequency distribution in which
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