Educational Statistics MCQ Questions Answers

1. When computing effect size, the sample size is ________.

2. To conduct a test of hypothesis with a small sample, we make an assumption that __________.

3. The t test for independent means is used when each group is tested ____________.

4. The rejection of a true null hypothesis is called a ______________ error.

5. For a fixed sample size, the lower we set α, the higher is the ___________.

6. The sample mean is _____ the confidence interval.

7. If calculated required sample size is a non integer value, we should always _____ calculated value.

8. In the t test for independent groups, ____.

9. The critical value for a hypothesis test _______.

10. The hypothesis statement h: μ < 60 is an example of a(an) ________ hypothesis.

11. The test statistic calculated by the statistical procedure selected is known as the ___________.

12. The sample mean is _____ the confidence interval.

13. When using student's t to compute an interval estimate, ___________.

14. The size of the sampling error is ________.

15. A(n) ____________ difference is due to some systematic influence and not due to chance.

16. Decreasing the alpha level from α = .05 to α = .01 ____.

17. Skinner trained plyny to perform a behavior chain. plyny was a ______.

18. Reinforcement is the _______ in a relationship

19. An attribute is also referred to as a ________.

20. Simple effects analysis looks at:

21. An experiment was done to look at the positive arousing effects of imagery on different people. A sample of statistics lecturers was compared against a group of students. Both groups received presentations of positive images (e.g., cats and bunnies), neutral images (e.g., duvets and light bulbs), and negative images (e.g., corpses and vivisection photographs). Positive arousal was measured physiologically (high values indicate positive arousal) both before and after each batch of images. The order in which participants saw the batches of positive, neutral and negative images was randomized to avoid order effects. It was hypothesized that positive images would increase positive arousal, negative images would reduce positive arousal and that neutral images would have no effect. Differences between the subject groups (lecturers and students) were not expected. What technique should be used to analyse these data?

22. Imagine we wanted to investigate whether a person’s profession can predict scores on a self-report psychopathy scale. We collected data from people in eight professions and a group of unemployed people. The eight professions were: bank traders, insurance brokers, health care professionals, business executives, volunteer workers, full-time mums, teachers, construction workers. The outcome was psychopathy score. How could we analyse these data?

23. Mediation has occurred when:

24. Which of the following is an example of perfect mediation?

25.

 The student welfare office was interested in trying to enhance students’ exam performance by investigating the effects of various interventions. They took five groups of students before their statistics exams and gave them one of five interventions: (1) a control group just sat in a room contemplating the task ahead (Control); (2) the second group had a yoga class to relax them (Yoga); (3) the third group were told they would get monetary rewards contingent upon the grade they received in the exam (Bribes); (4) the fourth group were given beta-blockers to calm their nerves (Beta-Blockers); and (5) the fifth group were encouraged to sit around winding each other up about how much revision they had/hadn’t done (You’re all going to fail). The student welfare office made four predictions: (1) all interventions should be different from the control; (2) yoga, bribery and beta-blockers should lead to higher exam scores than panic; (3) yoga and bribery should have different effects than the beta-blocker drugs; and (4) yoga and bribery should also differ.  Which of the following planned contrasts (with the appropriate group coding) are correct to test these hypotheses?

26. Imagine you compare the effectiveness of four different types of stimulant to keep you awake while revising statistics using a one-way ANOVA. The null hypothesis would be that all four treatments have the same effect on the mean time kept awake. How would you interpret the alternative hypothesis?

27. A psychologist was looking at the effects of an intervention on depression levels. Three groups were used: waiting list control, treatment and post-treatment (a group who had had the treatment 6 months before). The SPSS output is below. Based on this output, what should the researcher report?

28. Which of the following sentences about grand mean centring in moderation analysis is not true?

29. Imagine we wanted to look at predictors of popularity of famous sports people. We might hypothesize that the type of sport played would predict how popular the sports person was. Imagine we recruited 1000 participants and asked them to rate out of 10 (10 = They are the best sports person in the world, 0 = They are the worst sports person in the world) how much they liked 100 famous sports people from 10 different types of sports (10 sports people from each category). Could we analyse these data using regression, and if so how?

30. 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?

31. An independent t-test is used to test for:

32. 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?

33. 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?

34. A researcher was interested in the stress levels of lecturers during lectures. 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?

35. A consumer researcher was interested in what factors influence people's fear responses to horror films. She measured gender (0 = female, 1 = male) and how much a person is prone to believe in things that are not real (fantasy proneness) on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = not at all fantasy prone, 4 = very fantasy prone). Fear responses were measured on a scale from 0 (not at all scared) to 15 (the most scared I have ever felt). How much variance (as a percentage) in fear is shared by gender and fantasy proneness in the population?

36. A psychologist was interested in whether the amount of news people watch predicts how depressed they are. Based on the output below, is there evidence that a meaningful relationship exists in the population?

37. A consumer researcher was interested in what factors influence people's fear responses to horror films. She measured gender (0 = female, 1 = male) and how much a person is prone to believe in things that are not real (fantasy proneness) on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = not at all fantasy prone, 4 = very fantasy prone). Fear responses were measured on a scale from 0 (not at all scared) to 15 (the most scared I have ever felt). What is the likely population value of the parameter describing the relationship between gender and fear?

38. A psychologist was interested in whether the amount of news people watch predicts how depressed they are. Based on the output, is news exposure a significant predictor of depression?

39. General linearA psychologist was interested in whether the amount of news people watch (minutes per day) predicts how depressed they are (from 0 = not depressed to 7 = very depressed). What does the standardized beta tell us in the output?

40. The relationship between two variables partialling out the effect that a third variable has on one of those variables can be expressed using a:

41. The correlation between two variables A and B is .12 with a significance of p < .01. What can we

42. When interpreting a correlation coefficient, it is important to look at:

43. A scatterplot shows:

44. What is the standard error?

45. What does the graph below indicate about the normality of our data?

46. What is the Shapiro–Wilk test primarily used for? (Hint: You can also use the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to look at the same thing.)

47. Which of these variables would be considered not to have met the assumptions of parametric tests based on the normal distribution? (Hint: Many statistical tests rely on having data measured at the interval level.)

48. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test can be used to test:

49. 15,467 people rated how much they liked my textbook on a scale of 1 (it is rubbish) to 10 (I love it). The distribution of scores had a skew of 1.23 (SE = 0.65). Which of the following would be the best way to decide whether the skew is problematic? (Hint: Think about what you know about the central limit theorem.)

50. In logistic regression, what is the R-statistic?

51. Imagine you conducted a study to look at the association between whether an expectant mother eats breakfast (or not) and the gender of her baby. Cramér’s V = .22. How would you interpret this value?

52. Which of the following statements about statistical power are true. The power of a statistical test depends on:

53. Which of the following statements about statistical power are false.

54. A Type I error occurs when: (Hint: When we use test statistics to tell us about the true state of the world, we’re trying to see whether there is an effect in our population.)

55. What is p the probability if the null hypothesis were true? (Hint: NHST relies on fitting a ‘model’ to the data and then evaluating the probability of this ‘model’ given the assumption that no effect exists.)

56. If my null hypothesis is ‘Dutch people do not differ from English people in height’, what is my alternative hypothesis?

57. If my experimental hypothesis were ‘Eating cheese before bed affects the number of nightmares you have’, what would the null hypothesis be?

58. ‘Children can learn a second language faster before the age of 7’. Is this statement:

59. Imagine you conduct a t-test using IBM SPSS and the output reveals that Levene’s test for equality of variance is significant. What should you do? (Hint: Levene’s test tests the assumption that variances in

60. The assumption of homogeneity of variance is met when:

61. Which of the following transformations is most useful for correcting skewed data?

62. There are basically two types of statistics – descriptive and inferential. Which of the following sentences are true about descriptive statistics? (Hint: The answer is in the name descriptive statistics).

63. Which of the following statements is true?

64. What symbol is used to represent the standard error of the mean?

65. What is the relationship between sample size and the standard error of the mean? (Hint: The law of large numbers applies here: the larger the sample is, the better it will reflect that particular population.)

66. What does a significant test statistic tell us?

67. Should you use significance tests of skew and kurtosis in large samples?

68. In a small data sample (N = 20), what can we say about a z-score of 2.37?

69. Below is a histogram of ratings of Britney Spears’s CD, Britney. What can we say about the data from this histogram?

70. Imagine we took a group of smokers, recorded the number of cigarettes they smoked each day, whether they wanted to quit smoking or not, and then split them randomly into one of two 6-week interventions; ‘hypnosis’ or ‘nicotine patch’. After the 6 weeks, we again recorded how many cigarettes they smoked each day and subtracted this number from the number of cigarettes they each smoked pre-intervention, to produce an intervention success score for each participant. Out of the following options, which would be the best method of looking at which intervention was the most successful, taking into account whether the participant wanted to quit or not?

71. What does a histogram show? (Hint: Histograms are also known as frequency distributions.)

72. Based on the chart, what was the interquartile range of marks (approximately).

73. Based on the chart, what was the median mark (approximately)?

74. What is this graph known as?

75. What does the assumption of independence mean?

76. ‘Children can learn a second language differently before the age of 7 than after.’ Is this statement:

77. Which of the following is true about a 95% confidence interval of the mean:

78. Complete the following sentence: A large standard deviation (relative to the value of the mean itself) (Hint: The standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion or spread of data around the mean.)

79. Complete the following sentence: A small standard deviation (relative to the value of the mean itself) (Hint: The standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion or spread of data around the mean.)

80. In IBM SPSS, what does clicking on this icon do?

81. Variation due to variables that have not been measured is known as:

82. Which of the following is designed to compensate for practice effects?

83. A frequency distribution in which there are too few scores at the extremes of the distribution said to be:

84. A frequency distribution in which there are too many scores at the extremes of the distribution said to be:

85. When questionnaire scores predict or correspond with external measures of the same construct that the questionnaire measures it is said to have:

86. If a test is valid, what does this mean?

87. A café owner wanted to compare how much revenue he gained from lattes across different months of the year. What type of variable is ‘month’?

88. A café owner decided to calculate how much revenue he gained from lattes each month. What type of variable would the amount of revenue gained from lattes be?

89. Which of the following variables are nominal .

90. What kind of variable is IQ, measured by a standard IQ test?

91. 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:

92. A predictor variable is another name for:

93. A variable that measures the effect that manipulating another variable has is known as:

94. Which of the following best describes a confounding variable?

95. By converting a distribution of observations into z-scores a new distribution is created that has a mean of ______and a standard deviation of _____.

96. Yate's continuity correction is an adjustment made to the ________ test when the contingency table is 2 rows by 2 columns

97. Y-axis is the ________ axis of a graph

98. X-axis is also known as ordinate

99. Another name for a 'repeated-measures design'

100. Winsorizing is a method for reducing the impact of