What is the IV and the levels of the IV? What is the DV and how is it being measured
Textbook: Research Methods in Psychology by Beth Morling
Chapter 10: Introduction to Simple Experiments
Chapter 11: More on Experiments: Confounding and Obscuring Variables
Read the experiment below and then answer the questions that follow related to the content in Chapter Eleven on threats to internal validity (and also using/building on the information from Chapter Ten on simple experiments):
Professor Beach wanted to demonstrate to his cognitive psychology class how using retrieval cues can improve memory. First, he read a list of 16 words in random order to his class. Immediately afterwards he had his students write down all the words they could remember. On average, they recalled about seven words. Then, he told them that the words could be sorted into four categories: automobiles, cutting instruments, sports, and fruits. Professor Beach encouraged his students to do this in their minds while listening to the list again, after which they would be given another chance to recall the words. On the second test of recall, students remembered, on average, 14 words. From these findings, Professor Beach concluded that retrieval cues serve as an effective mnemonic strategy.
1. What is the IV and the levels of the IV? What is the DV and how is it being measured?
2. Did Professor Beach use a between-subjects or within-subjects design?
3. Which of the following best describes the design used in this study: posttest-only, pretest/posttest, repeated-measures, or concurrent-measures? Explain.
4. Identify and explain one possible threat to the internal validity of the experiment and explain how it could possibly be addresses/avoided (Chapter 11).
5. Discuss the external validity of the experiment. Can Professor Beach’s results be generalized? Why or why not?
Answer preview to what is the IV and the levels of the IV? What is the DV and how is it being measured
APA
370 words
