PSYC 3110 Scientific Inquiry in Psychology Homework 6 Instructions Answer the following short-answer questions. All answers should be in complete sentences and free from proofreading errors. You should not need more than a paragraph to answer each question. Remember that more isn’t necessarily better. Do not include the homework questions in your submission. Just give the question number and your answer. All sentences and ideas are assumed to be your own unless you cite your source. Using someone else’s work without attribution is plagiarism and will result in an F in the course. Please note that artificial intelligence is not permitted for this assignment. See the “Artificial Intelligence” section for more details. Questions 1. As covered in the lectures and textbook, it is essential for survey designers to pay careful attention to wording. Poor wording leads to poor questions. We covered a number of potential pitfalls with question wording. Pick three. For each, give an example question and explain why that question type is problematic, paying particular attention to construct validity. Please note that your problematic-question examples should be your own. For reasons that I do not understand, students in the past have often pla1 giarized their answer to this question—rather than making up their own problematic questions, they copy questions verbatim from my lecture slides, the textbook, or websites. It would be silly to do this, both because it would violate CSUB’s Policy on Academic Integrity and because it is literally the easiest part of the question. Use the following information to answer Questions 2 and 3. Célestine is interested in the effects of subliminal messaging on selfesteem. Eighty undergraduate students are recruited to participate in what they are led to believe is a simple study on self-esteem. They completed the study on a computer. Before the self-esteem survey, they are given a short video game to play. Unbeknownst to participants, words are periodically flashed on the screen while they are playing the video game. The words are presented too quickly for participants to be consciously aware of them. Célestine randomly assigns the 80 participants to see either positive words or negative words during the video-game phase. Because participants are not told about the subliminal-word manipulation, they do not know what condition they are in. Célestine also ensures that her research assistants are unaware of experimental condition—the computer handles the random assignment of participants to conditions. After the video game, participants are given a 10-item self-esteem survey. The survey produces self-esteem scores ranging from 0 to 50 (higher scores indicate greater self-esteem). Célestine finds that participants’ self-esteem scores are higher following exposure to positive words than negative words. The pattern is shown in 2 Figure 1. An independent-samples t test confirms this difference to be statistically significant, t(78) = 3.05, p = .003.1 15 0 5 10 Self-Esteem 20 25 30 Self-Esteem as a Function of Subliminal Messaging Positive Negative Message Figure 1: Error bars represent standard deviations. 2. Célestine ensured that neither the participants nor any research assistants who interacted with participants knew who was in which condition. What is this called and why is it methodologically important? 3. Can Célestine conclude that subliminal-message type caused changes in self-esteem scores? To get credit for answering this question, you must evaluate Célestine’s study with respect to the criteria for causation. A Note on Plagiarism You are assumed to be familiar with CSUB’s policy on academic integrity. Intentional or accidental violation of the policy constitutes academic dishon1 Remember that the α level is conventionally set to .05, and if p < α (i.e., if p < .05), we reject H0 . 3 esty (cheating) and will result in an F in the course. Please never cheat—it is not worth it! Artificial Intelligence You are explicitly prohibited from using artificial intelligence, including tools like ChatGPT, to complete this assignment. Engaging in such practices would not only constitute academic dishonesty but also have severe academic consequences, including receiving a failing grade (F) for the course, being referred to the Dean of Students Office, and having a permanent mark attached to your academic record. While I cannot guarantee that I will detect every use of artificial intelligence, I urge you to consider the long-term effects and ethical implications of dishonest behavior. Here are some compelling reasons why utilizing artificial intelligence in this course is counterproductive: • Learning opportunity: The homework assignments provide a low-stakes opportunity for you to identify your strengths and areas for improvement. Relying on artificial intelligence deprives you of this opportunity, leading to inadequate preparation for more significant assessments such as in-class quizzes, midterms, activities, and the final exam. • Inaccuracies: Artificial-intelligence tools may not provide accurate solutions to all of the complex problems covered in this course. Repetitive errors resembling artificial-intelligence-generated content will be considered a violation of CSUB’s policy on academic integrity. 4 • Synonyms and terminology: Artificial intelligence often uses various synonyms for research-methods terms. Using terminology not covered in the course material may indicate artificial-intelligence use or unauthorized external sources (remember that all external sources utilized must be appropriately cited). These guidelines sound harsh, although that is not my intention. I am committed to your education: I sincerely want you to gain the skills required by this class (and which you will need for your upper-division psychology courses). To that end, the ban on artificial intelligence is necessary. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Email: tensor@csub.edu Text: 302-219-4752 Acceptable File Formats This assignment must be completed electronically using a text-based file format. Because I am blind, there are limitations imposed on me by the screen-reading software I use. Pictures are completely inaccessible, so do not write your answers by hand and take a picture. Instead, type your answers in a word processor and submit that file. The following file formats are permissible: doc, docx, rtf, txt, and pages. Note that pdf files will not be accepted. Submission Requirements This assignment must be submitted on Canvas by 11:59 P.M. on Sunday, March 17, 2024. Late submissions will not be accepted. Canvas is unforgiving, so make sure you give yourself plenty of time to submit—that is, don’t wait until the last minute. If you submit at 12:00 A.M. instead of 11:59 P.M., 5 Canvas will not allow you to upload your assignment. 6
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