Deck 2: Studying Sex and Gender

Question 1

Some gender researchers argue that a maximalist approach is problematic because ______.

A) it ignores important sex differences
B) it perpetuates overgeneralized beliefs about the sexes
C) it prioritizes the effects of culture too strongly over biology
D) research on sex differences cannot be objective

Answer 1

it perpetuates overgeneralized beliefs about the sexes

Question 2

Which of the following does NOT accurately describe science?

A) It most heavily emphasizes evidence that is consistent with theory.
B) It is defined more by its methods than by its contents.
C) Repeating experiments over again is a key step in conducting science.
D) Scientific research often relies on evidence that is probabilistic.

Answer 2

It most heavily emphasizes evidence that is consistent with theory.

Question 3

The value of a correlation coefficient describes both ______ and______.

A) reliability; significance
B) reliability; strength
C) significance; direction
D) strength; direction

Answer 3

strength; direction

Question 4

Tracy examines sex differences in verbal ability by comparing Scrabble scores across hundreds of male and female participants. She predicts female participants will score higher on average than male participants; however, the results reveal no difference. This is called a ______ result.

A) significant
B) mediating
C) null
D) negative

Question 5

One limitation of correlational designs is ______.

A) small sample sizes
B) the third variable problem
C) dependence upon self-report measures
D) lack of external validity or generalizability

Question 6

Imagine Mark is studying sex differences in emotional expression. His study contains measures for seven different types of emotional expression. He finds that women score higher on one of these and men score higher on another one. He interprets his findings as suggesting largely different styles of emotional expression across men and women. Mark's interpretation indicates a ______ approach.

A) biological
B) cross-cultural
C) minimalist
D) maximalist

Question 7

A testable prediction regarding the outcome of a study is called a(n) ______.

A) theory
B) hypothesis
C) replication
D) boundary condition

Question 8

______ refer to instances when the strength or direction of the association between an independent and dependent variable differ as a function of another variable.

A) Bivariate correlations
B) Mediation effects
C) Interaction effects
D) Third variable problems

Question 9

Which of the following is the best example of a hypothesis?

A) An observation that men tend to walk faster in pairs than when alone.
B) The idea that judgments are driven more by emotion than by conscious reasoning.
C) The belief that people rationalize unfairness in order to avoid cognitive dissonance.
D) A prediction that women will score higher on a test of verbal ability than men.

Question 10

______ methods allow researchers to turn their variables of interest into numbers.

A) Quantitative
B) Qualitative
C) Experimental
D) Correlational

Question 11

When psychologists report discovering sex differences on some variable (e.g., optimism) what do they typically mean by this?

A) that these differences emerge from distinct biological sex categories
B) that the difference between sexes has a large effect size
C) that the difference has a practical level of significance
D) that the observed difference is unlikely to have occurred due to chance

Question 12

Which of the following best represents the order of the scientific process?

A) generate hypothesis $\rightarrow$ replicate $\rightarrow$ collection and analysis $\rightarrow$ study design
B) generate hypothesis $\rightarrow$ study design $\rightarrow$ collection and analysis $\rightarrow$ disseminate results
C) study design $\rightarrow$ generate hypothesis $\rightarrow$ disseminate results $\rightarrow$ collection and analysis
D) study design $\rightarrow$ collection and analysis $\rightarrow$ generate hypothesis $\rightarrow$ disseminate results

Question 13

Experimental methods in gender research can be especially challenging because ______.

A) the independent and dependent variables are difficult to operationalize
B) sex and gender identity cannot be easily or ethically manipulated
C) self-report measures of gender identity are especially unreliable
D) the field is more prone to bias than other social science research

Question 14

Which of the following is typically the first step in the scientific method?

A) study design
B) replication
C) hypothesis generation
D) data collection

Question 15

Which of the following is NOT crucial to making causal inferences from a study?

A) random assignment
B) manipulation
C) a representative sample
D) holding other variables constant

Question 16

Naturally occurring features of research participants that are measured instead of manipulated are called ______ variables.

A) dependent
B) participant
C) mediating
D) observational

Question 17

Consider a research study that brings participants into the laboratory one at a time where they have a brief social interaction with an accomplice. Researchers measure the amount of time each participant spends making eye contact during the interaction. They then compare eye contact duration of male and female participants. Which design best describes the above study?

A) experiment
B) ex post facto
C) qualitative
D) person-by-treatment

Question 18

Which of the following is FALSE regarding common beliefs about sex differences?

A) Young girls have been found to be slightly more talkative than young boys.
B) Part of the reason women are reluctant to engage in casual sex is because they do not expect it to be pleasurable.
C) Adult women tend to use more verbose language than adult men.
D) Women and men perform similarly on tests of math ability.

Question 19

Which of the following is FALSE about sex and math ability?

A) Girls tend to have higher math anxiety than boys.
B) Girls would likely score higher than boys on math tests if not for math anxiety.
C) Math performance is predicted less by sex than by socioeconomic status.
D) Large-scale reviews show no overall sex differences in math performance.

Question 20

Researchers manipulate the ______ variable and observe changes in the______.

A) mediator; moderator
B) moderator; independent
C) dependent; mediator
D) independent; dependent

Question 21

Sam conducts a study of 1000 male participants examining how candidate attitudes, age, and education affect voting behavior. He finds a positive association between education and likelihood of voting, from which he concludes that overall, more educated people are more likely to vote. Based on the above information alone, at which stage of the research process might Sam's study be biased?

A) study design
B) sampling strategy
C) identifying the question
D) disseminating the results

Question 22

What best describes Alice Eagly and colleagues' findings from a meta-analysis on sex differences in leadership effectiveness?

A) They found no sex differences in leadership effectiveness.
B) Overall, men are better leaders than women.
C) Overall, women are better leaders than men.
D) Men are more effective in male-dominated contexts, and women are more effective in context less dominated by males.

Question 23

Standard deviation is a measure of ______.

A) variability
B) reliability
C) mean difference
D) association

Question 24

Which of the following best illustrates a type of question a researcher operating from the female deficit model might ask?

A) Do girls lack math abilities compared to boys?
B) What factors might cause girls to underperform in math relative to boys?
C) Under what conditions do boys and girls perform differently on math exams?
D) What is the effect of stereotypes upon math anxiety among boys and girls?

Question 25

Which of the following is represented by the d statistic?

A) the likelihood that an observed difference between two groups is due to chance
B) the direction and strength of a relationship between two variables in unstandardized units
C) the amount of spread, or deviations around the mean, in a variable
D) the difference between two groups in standardized units

Question 26

Crawford and Kaufman (2008) conducted interview with 20 girls rescued from sex trafficking in Nepal and then statistically summarized the main themes in the case. This type of research is best characterized as ______.

A) mixed method
B) qualitative
C) quantitative
D) quasi-experimental

Question 27

What do researchers mean when they describe a difference as statistically significant?

A) that the variance in one variable is significantly greater than the variance in other
B) that there is a 95% chance that one variable caused a change in another
C) that the effect size is large
D) that it is very unlikely that the observed difference resulted merely from chance

Question 28

Which of the following is NOT an example of a qualitative method?

A) conducting one-on-one interviews with victims of cyber bullying
B) examining arresting court records, personal histories, and media releases for perpetrators of domestic terrorism
C) administering the Big Five personality inventory to a group with ADHD
D) conducting group sessions with victims of domestic abuse

Question 29

Why do researchers standardize variables or express them in standard deviation units?

A) to increase the reliability of measurement scales
B) to make meaningful comparisons across different scales
C) to make distributions less skewed
D) to decrease the variability and spread of the data

Question 30

A key difference between cross-sectional and longitudinal designs is that ______.

A) cross-sectional designs are experimental and longitudinal are correlational
B) longitudinal designs are immune to third variable problems
C) longitudinal designs can reduce causal ambiguity
D) cross-sectional designs produce more generalizable results

Question 31

Pushes towards qualitative methods in psychology have gained momentum for each of the following reasons EXCEPT ______.

A) an effort to include voices and perspectives of marginalized groups
B) quantitative research viewing women's experiences as deviations from the male norm
C) the misleading implication of objectivity or value-neutrality in quantitative research
D) problems with the internal validity of inferential statistics

Question 32

Which of the following is TRUE of qualitative research methods?

A) They are the most popular method in psychology.
B) They rely upon inferential statistics.
C) They are more concerned with trends in large populations over contextualized experiences.
D) They emphasize depth over breadth and subjective interpretations over objective reality.

Question 33

A(n) ______ is a quantitative technique for analyzing the aggregate results from a set of individual studies.

A) literature review
B) meta-analysis
C) archival analysis
D) regression

Question 34

All of the following contribute to a larger effect size EXCEPT ______.

A) an increased difference between two means
B) high between-group variance
C) low within-group variance
D) large sample size

Question 35

In meta-analyses the most typical unit of analysis is a(n) ______.

A) effect size
B) group average
C) p-value
D) confidence interval

Question 36

Anderson and Leaper's (1998) discovery that studies with female first authors found larger sex differences in interruptions (favoring men) and studies with mail first authors might be an example of ______.

A) researcher bias
B) participant bias
C) demand characteristics
D) social desirability

Question 37

Which of the following refers to the difference between the average values for each group?

A) the within-group variance
B) the between-group variance
C) standard deviation
D) the inter-group effect

Question 38

Imagine Sandy is conducting a longitudinal study on exposure to violent pornography and hostile attitudes towards women. She finds that exposure to violent photography at time 1 predicts hostile attitudes towards women at time 2. But she also finds that hostile attitudes at time 1 predict exposure to violent pornography at time 2. Which of the following is the BEST interpretation of Sandy's findings?

A) Exposure to violent pornography causes hostile attitudes towards women.
B) Hostile attitudes towards women cause people to watch violent pornography.
C) The causal relationship between violent pornography and hostile attitudes likely works in both directions.
D) There is no causal relationship between violent pornography and hostile attitudes towards women.

Question 39

The qualitative method in which researchers conduct an in-depth investigation of a single entity, usually a person, providing great detail but lacking generalizability is referred to as ______.

A) an interview
B) a focus group
C) ethnography
D) a case study

Question 40

Laura is studying the effect size of sex differences in vertical jumps and finds a d of .87. She concludes the effect size is ______.

A) large
B) medium
C) small
D) null

Question 41

A d of −1.12 is small effect size.

Question 42

Which of the following is key to avoiding exaggerating the magnitude of sex differences.

A) communicating the distinction between statistical and practical significance
B) emphasizing statistical significance of a result over its effect size
C) taking a maximalist approach to research
D) using primarily experimental methods

Question 43

A well conducted experiment allows researchers to make causal inferences.

Question 44

When there is a great deal of variability within groups then effect sizes tend to be smaller.

Question 45

All of the following are strategies that psychologists might use to address issues of intersectionality EXCEPT ______.

A) encouraging more diversity among professional ranks
B) diversifying research samples
C) expanding the number of demographic questions in studies
D) always reporting effect sizes

Question 46

Which best illustrates the meaning of postpositivism?

A) Objective and value free knowledge can be attained through empirical investigation.
B) Science is a useful but flawed process that is heavily influenced by the values of researchers.
C) Empiricism is inherently patriarchal and skewed towards favoring men.
D) Science is better described as a tool for social change than knowledge acquisition.

Question 47

Qualitative methods emphasizes individual experiences and subjective interpretations over the idea of objective reality.

Question 48

Qualitative research is less scientifically valid than quantitative research.

Question 49

Meta-analyses examining the size of all sex differences examined by researchers have found which of the following?

A) Over three quarters of the effect sizes examined have been in the small to near-zero range.
B) Most effect sizes tend to fall in the media.
C) Approximately 20% of effect examined are large in size.
D) There are no meaningful sex differences after accounting for publication bias.

Question 50

Stephen is studying sex differences in helping behavior but he only measures heroic or chivalrous types of helping behaviors. He concludes that men are far more likely to help than women. What is one possible critique of Stephen's study?

A) He did not collect a representative sample.
B) He only measured male gendered types of helping behavior.
C) The dependent measures he chose are irrelevant to every day helping.
D) He did not randomly assign participants to different types of helping contexts.

Question 51

One of the advantages of longitudinal studies is that they are not susceptible to third variable problems.

Question 52

The presence of a statistically significant difference tells you that there is a large effect size.

Question 53

Scientific positivism is the philosophical position that objective and value free knowledge can be attained through empirical investigation.

Question 54

Androcentric thinking refers to a bias ______.

A) that frames men or male typed traits as the default
B) favoring feminine traits over masculine traits
C) in research towards interpreting results in a way that paints men in a more negative light
D) centering on sex differences rather than similarity

Question 55

Of all the stages of the scientific method, replication or repeating an experiment that someone has already conducted, is the least important.

Question 56

Which of the following is NOT true of postpositivism?

A) Cultural context influences what evidence is accepted as valid.
B) Science is never free of bias.
C) Science is a cumulative process susceptible to shifting conclusions.
D) Empirical investigation is an inferior method towards studying politically charged questions.

Question 57

Someone with a minimalist approach might envision that girls and boys have largely overlapping distributions of math anxiety scores.

Question 58

Bias at which stage of the research process most directly affects the generalizability of the findings?

A) Data collection/sampling
B) Identifying the research question
C) Designing the study
D) Interpreting the findings

Question 59

Given the recorded biases in gender research, which of the following might NOT be an appropriate strategy to reduce bias?

A) avoid using androcentric research materials
B) refrain from generalizing findings from single-sex samples to all people
C) publish more research focusing on sex differences rather than sex similarities
D) always report effect sizes when publishing research

Question 60

Proponents of intersexuality might offer which of the following critiques of how samples are typically collected in psychological studies in the United States?

A) They are too small in size and lacking in statistical power.
B) They are largely composed of White, middle class participants--ignoring the individual differences that exist within sex.
C) They often offer extra credit or other confounding incentives for participation.
D) They aren't truly random samples. People choose voluntarily whether or not to participate.

Question 61

Describe the difference between statistical and practical significance.

Question 62

Briefly describe postpositivism's critique of scientific positivism.

Question 63

Over three quarters of effect sizes associated with sex differences in cognitive, social, and motor variables fall in the small or close to zero range.

Question 64

Describe three stages of the scientific process that are vulnerable to bias. Describe an example for each.

Question 65

Describe three possible guidelines for encouraging gender fair research design.

Question 66

Proponents of intersectionality argue that it is not meaningful to make comparisons between women and men without taking other identities such as race, class, or sexual orientation into consideration.

Question 67

What is the difference between a maximalist and a minimalist approach to interpreting sex differences?

Question 68

What two types of variance are especially relevant to the degree of overlap between two distributions? For each of these types of variance, do higher or lower degrees of variance contribute to a larger effect size?

Question 69

Generalizing results from a sample composed entirely of men to all people is an example of androcentrism.

Question 70

What is meant by researcher bias and participant bias?

Question 71

Asking how negative stereotypes about women's math abilities can artificially lower their math performance is a good example of someone operating from the female deficit model.

Question 72

Callie is interested in whether men are more likely to make eye contact with a male conversation partner than a female partner. She is also interested in whether the topic of conversation (masculine topic vs feminine topic) affects the amount of eye contact men make with their conversation partner. She randomly assigns 200 male participants to interact with either a male or female conversation partner (played by a research assistant) and to either discuss a masculine (sports) or feminine (childcare) topic for 5 mins. Research assistants then time eye contact duration for each participant over the 5 min window. Identify each of the following: The general method used by the researcher, the independent and dependent variables, the number of conditions or study groups, and whether or not Callie can make causal inferences from her results. Why or why not can Callie infer causality from this design? Are there any possible interaction effects and how do you know?

Question 73

Name five steps in the scientific method in the order in which they typically occur.

Question 74

Emphasizing studies that focus on sex differences rather than similarities is an effective guideline for gender fair research.

Question 75

What are the pros and cons of quantitative versus qualitative research designs? How do mixed method approaches incorporate the advantages of both approaches?