Multiple Choice Questions

1. The ‘replication crisis’ refers to

  1. the difficulty in replicating the results of most psychological studies
  2. the fact that few psychological studies are checked by attempts at replication
  3. the widespread and growing concern that false positives may be prevalent in psychology
  4. the 1967 Star Trek episode ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’ 

Answer: C

2. The ‘null hypothesis’ refers to

  1. the hypothesis that the findings of a study will prove a particular premise
  2. the hypothesis that poor experimental design leads to invalid results
  3. the hypothesis that the findings of a study are due solely to random chance
  4. the hypothesis that most psychological studies have little meaning

Answer: C

3. Ioannidis (2005) found that the false discovery rate in common scientific practice is likely to be

  1. under 5%
  2. between 10 and 30%
  3. around 40%
  4. over 50%

Answer: D

4. Daryl Bem published a paper in 2011, which was controversial because

  1. it seemed that he had fabricated his entire dataset
  2. he used data manipulation techniques to select data that proved his hypothesis
  3. he appeared to have proved the existence of psychic ability in humans using standard scientific techniques
  4. he used wholly non-standard and unscientific techniques to reach his conclusions

Answer: C

5. The term ‘p-hacking’ refers to

  1. removing outliers from data to obtain a more representative sample
  2. any covert manipulation of data or statistical analyses with the aim of generating the researcher’s preferred results
  3. adding additional data points to a set of data in order to improve the correlation with a hypothesis
  4. fabricating entire sets of data for a psychological study

Answer: B

6. The ‘file drawer effect’, whereby researchers file away non-significant findings without publishing them is problematic because

  1. important non-significant results are not shared with the wider community
  2. it indicates that researchers waste a lot of time on insignificant studies
  3. the failure rate of studies is too high
  4. a large amount of money is wasted on storage of redundant data

Answer: A

7. The term ‘HARKing’ is short for

  1. Hypothesizing After the Results are Known
  2. Hiding Ambiguous Results with Kludges
  3. Hiding Artefacts with Random Kinks
  4. Hypothesizing About Rare Koalas

Answer: A

8. The fact that most psychology journals will NOT publish study replications is a problem because

  1. it reduces the potential profile of some researchers
  2. it means that replications are practically unheard of in psychology
  3. there is less work available for inexperienced researchers
  4. it reduces the funding available to journals

Answer: B

9. Which of the following has NOT been suggested as a way to help solve the replication crisis?

  1. reserving a portion of grant funding for replication studies
  2. carrying out less research that is likely to lead to ambiguous outcomes
  3. increasing the availability of full research method details and result data to promote replicability
  4. providing training to undergraduates in how to carry out high-quality replications

Answer: B

10. The Center for Open Science was founded by Professor Brian Nosek in 2013. The Center

  1. aims to increase the openness, integrity and reproducibility of scientific research
  2. produces software that is used to host and share data and materials for scientific research
  3. hosts preprint archives for sharing publications in various scientific fields
  4. all of these

Answer: D