2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

1. Which of the following is FALSE about populations in inferential statistics?

a. Populations usually cannot be directly measured

b. Inferential statistical procedures are used to make inferences about the population
c. Populations are a large group of observations used to draw conclusions about a larger
sample
d. Populations can be hypothetical

2. What is the sampling distribution?

a. A hypothetical distribution across infinite samples drawn from the same population
b. The distribution of scores obtained from a single sample
c. The distribution of all scores of a population
d. None of the above

3. Which combination of factors will lead to the sampling distribution with the least variance?

a. Larger number of participants and higher standard deviation

b. Larger number of participants and smaller standard deviation
c. Smaller number of participants and higher standard deviation
d. Smaller number of participants and smaller standard deviation

4. Which of the following is FALSE about the normal distribution?

a. 90% of the data lies between z = 1 and z = -1 in the normal distribution.
b. In the normal distribution, the mean is the center of the distribution.
c. 50% of the normal distribution is above and below the mean.
d. The above statements are all true.

5. What is the probability of obtaining a sample mean higher than 117 when the population
mean = 115, standard deviation = 8, and n = 64?
a. 0.053
b. 0.477
c. 0.023
d. 0.078

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

2
6. It is known that students’ scores in a mathematics exam are normally distributed with σ =
100. If n = 144, and M = 25, obtain 95% confidence limits for μ.

a. [15.87, 21.45]
b. [23.37, 26.63]
c. [28.12, 41.89]
d. [12.43, 17.82]

7. The null hypothesis is retained when:

a. The result is considered “statistically significant”

b. |𝑧| ≥ zc in a hypothesis test
c. |𝑧| < zc in a hypothesis test
d. None of the above.

8. Which of the following describes a Type I error?

a. Rejecting a false H0
b. Rejecting a true H0
c. Retaining a false H0
d. Retaining a true H0

9. What is the effect of adjusting the α value on the probability of errors occurring?

a. Decreasing α will decrease the risk of a Type I error and increase the risk of a Type II
error
b. Increasing α will decrease the risk of a Type I error and increase the risk of a Type II error
c. Decreasing α will decrease the risk of Type I and Type II error
d. Increasing α will decrease the risk of Type I and Type II error

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

10. Estimate, with 95% confidence, the average amount of hours spent studying by students
before passing their test.

Participant X

1 15

2 9

3 13

4 10

5 12

6 16

7 11

8 14

9 11

11. If H0: μ = μ0 was rejected in a 2-tailed hypothesis test with ɑ = .05, what would be the likely
outcome for a 95% confidence interval constructed with the same sample statistics?

a. μ0 will be contained in the confidence interval

b. μ0 will not be contained in the confidence interval
c. μ0 will be the lower confidence limit
d. μ0 will be the upper confidence limit

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

12. A study investigates whether it is more effective to study in the morning or afternoon by
recruiting 50 students and randomly assigning them to the morning class or afternoon class.
The students were measured by their grades in the final exam. What kind of analysis does
this study use?

a. Dependent means analysis

b. Independent means analysis
c. Not enough information to tell
d. Meta-analytic analysis

13. What is the p-value?

a. Probability that the result has a less than alpha = 0.05 chance of occurring.
b. Probability of correctly obtaining the test statistic as deviant as the one found when the
alternate hypothesis is true.
c. Probability that either a Type I error or a Type II error has been made
d. Probability of obtaining a test statistic different to the one found when the null hypothesis
is true.

14. Which of these statements about the robustness of a t-test is FALSE.

a. A t-test is not robust against violation of independence of observations (i.e. the results of
one observation may affect another)
b. The t-test is robust against violation of normality assumption (Central Limit Theorem).
c. Robustness can be evaluated through finding the standard deviation of the results.
d. The t-test is robust against violation of assumption of equal variances provided both
groups have an equal number of values (i.e. n1 = n2)

15. Martin conducts an experiment that involves randomly assigning 100 primary school
students to either a training group or a control group. Each participant in the training
group was matched to a corresponding participant in the control group of a similar age.
They were compared on their performance at the end of the experiment. One participant
opted out of the experiment midway through. How many degrees of freedom are there?

a. 97
b. 46
c. 98
d. 48

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

16. Fill in the blank:

If the t-statistic’s denominator increases, the t-statistic will become ______ because there is
a _____________.

a. larger, larger standard error

b. larger, because there is a smaller standard error
c. smaller, because there is a larger standard error
d. smaller, because there is a smaller standard error

17. What is a benefit of utilising a paired samples design and what is a disadvantage of it?

a. It mitigates chances of rank order effects but can lead to the issue of carry-over effects.
b. It decreases the standard error between conditions but can lead to cohort effects.
c. It increases the internal validity but can induce cohort effects.
d. It reduces the amount of variability across replications but can lead to rank-order effects.

18. What is an example of a carry-over effect?

a. Neera is asked to choose a scent in a perfume-making class and tests out several of them.
The first two scents were very strong and she ended up picking one at random as they all
ended up smelling the same.
b. Adrian pulled an all-nighter to complete his statistics assessment and ended up missing
the bus for his 3pm class.
c. UNSW students are recruited for an experiment that investigated 8 new cookie flavours.
After eating the first 3, participants did not consume as much of the remaining 5 and
ended up rating them lower.
d. Both A and C.
e. None of the above.

19. What is power?

a. Increasing the chance of making a Type II error in order to reduce the chance of making
the more problematic Type I error.
b. Probability of not making a Type I error when there is an effect.
c. Probability of not making a Type II error when there is an effect.
d. Decreasing the chance of making a Type I error in order to reduce the chance of making
the more problematic Type II error.

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

20. What are the factors affecting power?

a. The size of alpha, the sample size, the standard deviation size, the effect size and the
directionality of the alternative hypothesis.
b. The size of alpha, the sample size and the correlation between the independent and
dependent variable.
c. The size of alpha, the standard deviation, the effect size, the sample size and the
correlation between the independent and dependent variable.
d. The size of alpha, the sample size, the effect size, the directionality of the alternative
hypothesis and the setting of the study.

21. When is Cohen’s Rule of Thumb used?

a. When the researcher cannot work out power and requires some guidelines of effect size.
b. When the units for the DV are arbitrary or they do not know enough about them to
determine an effect size.
c. When the DV units are too big and would affect the standard error term.
d. When the effect size is unknown.

22. Describe what power is in statistics.

23. A researcher is investigating the effectiveness of a new teaching method in improving

students’ math scores. She wishes to carry out a single-mean t-test to compare the mean
scores of a group of 36 students with a known cohort mean score. If she wants to detect a
medium effect size, what power would she have for this test?

24. A psychologist is conducting an independent samples test investigating the effect of a new
drug in treating anxiety. He wants to detect an effect of at least γ = 0.6 between μ1 and μ2,
with an α = .05 2-tailed hypothesis test, and 80% power. How many participants would he
need to detect an effect of this size?

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

25. What is the power in a correlation experiment with 30 participants where we are interested
in finding a correlation of ±0.3, assuming an α = .05 2-tailed hypothesis test?

26. What sample size is needed to have an 90% chance of detecting γ = .5, with α = .05 in a
two-tailed test?

27. Which of these best describes a positive correlation?

a. A soda company found the more sodas were consumed in one sitting, the more energy a
person reported they felt.
b. A study that exposed all participants to a shock found that shocked participants had a
higher base level of nervousness.
c. A study found participants that eat more chocolate on a daily basis tended to spend less
money on coffee.
d. A study found that a certain brand’s skincare had very scattered results for its
effectiveness.

28. Which of these correlation equations reflect a negative correlation?

a. Y = 3 + 6X
b. Y = 6 + 3X
c. Y = 3 - 6X
d. Y = 3X - 6

29. Which of the following allows for the conclusion ZY’ = 0 to be made?

a. r = 1.0
b. r = 0.0
c. r = -1.0
d. r = 0.5

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

30. Which of the following statements is FALSE?

a. A negative correlation provides jsut as much information as a positive one.

b. Y is referred to as the dependent variable
c. X is referred to as the criterion variable
d. X is referred to as the independent variable

31. If SS(Regression) = 25.358 and SS(Residual) = 49.024, what % of variability in Y scores can
be accounted for by prediction from X?

a. 60%
b. 66%
c. 34%
d. 40%

32. If r = .56, MY = 250, MX = 30, sY = 0.53 and sX = 5.27, what is the slope of the regression line
Y’ = a + bX?

33. Which of the following statements best describe the regression line, or the line of “best fit”?

a. No other straight line will generate a smaller SS (Regression) than the regression line
b. No other straight line will generate a smaller SS (Residual) than the regression line
c. No other straight line will generate a larger SS (Regression) than the regression line
d. No other straight line will generate a larger SS (Residual) than the regression line

34. An experimenter decides to replicate an experiment he read in a scientific journal. He

follows the same methodology and investigates the same experimental question, but he uses
materials he prepared himself instead of the materials listed in the original experiment.
What type of replication is this?

a. Direct replication
b. Partial replication
c. Conceptual replication
d. None of the above

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

35. What is the difference between confirmatory and exploratory analyses?

a. Confirmatory analyses are conducted before data is collected, while exploratory analyses
are performed after data has been collected.
b. Exploratory analyses are conducted before data is collected, while confirmatory analyses
are performed after data has been collected.
c. Exploratory analyses can pre-register analyses to provide protection against researcher
degrees of freedom, while confirmatory analyses cannot.
d. Many tests are usually performed in confirmatory analyses.

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

Answers and Rationales

1. C: Refer to Week 1, Lecture 1, slide 2. C is false as samples are used to draw conclusions about a
population, not the other way around.

2. A: The sampling distribution is a hypothetical distribution formed by drawing an infinite number

of observations or samples from a population with regard to a particular sample statistic.
σ
3. B: Referring to the equation σM = , a larger number of participants leads to a smaller
𝑛
standard error of the mean, whereas a smaller number of participants leads to a larger SEM. A
larger standard deviation leads to a larger SEM, whereas a smaller standard deviation leads to a
smaller SEM.

4. A: 95% of the data lies between z = 1 and z = -1, instead of 90%. B and C are both true.

5. C:
σ 8
Step 1: Calculate the standard error: σM = = =1
𝑛 64

Step 2: Convert 117 into a z-score: 117 - 115 = 2 → 2 ÷ 1 = 2

Step 3: Find the area beyond z = 2 using Table 1, Areas Under the Normal Curve: 0.5 - 0.477 =
0.023
*Note: we subtract 0.477 from 0.5 as the table gives us the area from the mean to our z-score. In
order to find the remaining area beyond z = 2, we must subtract the area we know (the area
between the mean and z = 2) from the total area (half of the distribution).

6. B: [23.37, 26.63]

Step 1: Find z-critical and the standard error. Z-critical = 1.96, σM = 10/12
Step 2: Find the upper and lower limits for μ, using μ𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 = 𝑀 − (𝑧𝑐 * σ𝑀) and

μ𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑟 = 𝑀 + (𝑧𝑐 * σ𝑀)

7. C: As stated on Lecture 3 Null Hypothesis Tests slide 11, H0 is rejected if |𝑧|≥ zc, and retained if
|𝑧| < zc

8. B: A Type I error occurs when a true H0 is rejected.

9. A: The alpha level (α) provides a way to control the risk of making a Type I error; if α = .05,
there is a 5% risk of making a Type I error. However, if α is very small, it is harder to reject H0
when it is actually false, thus increasing the risk of a Type II error.

10. Solution:

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

Participant X x=X-M x2

1 15 3 9

2 9 -3 9

3 13 1 1

4 10 -2 4

5 12 0 0

6 16 4 16

7 11 -1 1

8 14 2 4

9 11 -1 1

10 9 -3 9

∑ 120 0 54

M 12

Step 1: Find tc
ɑ = .05
df = n-1 = 9
tc = tɑ/2;df = t.05/2;9 = 2.262

Step 2: Find sM
2
Σ(𝑋−𝑀) 54
sM= 𝑛(𝑛−1)
= 10(9)
= 0.775

Step 3: Find limits

μupper= M+(tc × sM) = 12 + (2.262 × 0.775) = 13.753
μlower= M-(tc × sM) = 12 - (2.262 × 0.775) = 10.247

Step 4: Conclusion
We can be 95% confident that the population mean number of hours spent studying by students
before passing their test is between 10.25 and 13.75.

11. B: If μ0 is contained in the confidence interval, then μ0 is a plausible value for μ and H0 will be
retained; conversely, if μ0 is not contained in the interval, it is not a plausible value for μ and H0
will be rejected.

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

12. B: The study has two levels of the independent variable that participants are randomly assigned
to. Therefore, it would employ independent means analysis. (Lecture 6 Slide 2).

13. D: The p-value is the probability of a Type 1 error occurring. B incorrectly claims that the
probability is about the alternate hypothesis rather than the null hypothesis. C is incorrect since
the p-value does not take Type II errors into account. (Lecture 5 Slide 17)

14. C: Robustness of t test is not about standard deviation. (Lecture 6 Slide 18-20)

15. D: Because the participants were matched, this is a paired samples design. Therefore, there are
50 unique groups. Because one participant dropped out, only 49 of those groups are valid. df = n
- 1 = 49 - 1 = 48

16. C: The t-statistic is based on the variation between groups (i.e. variation caused by the
independent variable and extraneous variables) over the variation within groups (i.e. variability
only caused by extraneous variables). A larger denominator leads to a larger standard error,
thereby resulting in a smaller t-statistic.

17. D: As described on slides 10, 11 and 18 of Lecture 7. It is not B as this design does reduce the
standard error (which is why it decreases variability due to extraneous variables), but it does not
lead to cohort effects.

18. D: Both A and C are carry-over effects because the first few conditions (intial scents tested and
cookies tasted) affected participants’ judgement on the following conditions.

19. C: As stated in slide 3 of Lecture 8.

20. A: As identified in slides 6 to 10 of Lecture 8.

21. B: As stated in slide 13 of Lecture 13, these rules are utilised when information about the DV
units are limited.

22. Rationale: Power is the probability of correctly rejecting a false null hypothesis and finding a
statistically significant result. It is denoted as 1 - β, where β is the probability of a Type II error
(or, incorrectly retaining a false null hypothesis). Power is affected by several factors: Type I
error rate (alpha), the directionality of the alternative hypothesis, the effect size, the population
standard deviation, and the sample size.

23. Rationale:

Step 1: Determine values for α, n, and γ.

α = .05, n = 36, γ = 0.5

Step 2: Find δ using the formula for a single means test: δ = γ 𝑛

δ = 0.5 x 6 = 3.0
Step 3: Find power using the table 3: power as a function of delta and alpha
Therefore, power = .85

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

24. Rationale:

Step 1: Determine values for α, 1-β, and γ.

α = .05, 1-β, = 0.8, γ = 0.6
Step 2: Use table 4: delta as a function of power and alpha to find δ.
δ = 2.802
δ 2
Step 3: Find n using the formula for independent means: 𝑛 = 2( γ )

n = 43.6
Therefore, he would need 44 participants.

25. Rationale:
Step 1: n = 30 γ = .3 α = .05, 2-tailed

Step 2: δ = γ 𝑛 − 1 = 0. 3 × 29 = 1. 6
Step 3: From Table 3, power = .36

26. Rationale:
Step 1: 1 - β = .9, γ = .5, α = .05, 2-tailed
Step 2: From Table 4, δ = 3. 242

3.242 2
Step 3: 𝑛 = ( 0.5
) + 1 = 43. 042

Therefore at least 44 participants are necessary.

27. A: Positive correlation means that the more of one variable, the more of another, corresponding
to that of A. C is a negative correlation, D found no correlation. B is not a correlation.

28. C: C has a negative correlation since as X increases, Y decreases. The others are all positive
correlations.

29. B: See Week 7 Lecture 11 Slide 17.

30. C: X is referred to as the predictor variable, not the criterion variable (Y).

31. C: r2 = SS Regression/SS Total

= 25.358/74.382
= 0.341
≈ 34%

32. Answer: b = r(SY/SX)

= .56(.53/5.27)
= 0.056

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2024 PSYC2001 Practice Examination

33. B: As stated on Lecture 12 Slide 14.

34. C: Refer to Week 9, Lecture 2, lecture recording. Conceptual replication is when a study aims to
test the same concepts or hypothesis as the original experiment, but may change the methodology
or materials used.

35. A: Refer to Week 9, Lecture 2, slides 19 and 20.

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