BA 215 Midterm Exam

BA 215 Midterm Exam1. Older people who walk quickly live longer explains that researchers in 2005 used measurements of walking speed from data collected in 1996 from about 500 elderly people. National mortality information enabled the researchers to check on whether the people were still alive nine years later. They found that 27 percent of people deemed to walk at a fast speed in 1996 (about 2.5 miles per hour) were dead nine years later. Meanwhile, 77 percent of those evaluated as walking slowly (less than 1.5 mph) had died, as had 50 percent of those at medium speed.What type of study was this?2. Researchers have recently studied the phenomenon of “Chemo brain”, whereby chemotherapy drugs for breast cancer presumably cause women to experience loss of some cognitive ability.The report also claimed that 15% of the nation’s 2.4 million female breast cancer survivors remain distracted years after their chemo-therapy treatment. This result was most likely based on3. Ever since Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol blamed his sleep disturbances on “a crumb of cheese”, there has been a common belief that cheese can cause nightmares. The British Cheese Board carried out a study in 2005 that attempted to dispel such rumors. A group of 200 volunteers were asked to eat 20 grams of cheese 30 minutes before going to sleep each night for a week, afterwards, none of the participants reported having had nightmares, 72% reported having slept very well every night.The response variable’s type is4. The design described is5. Another possible design would be to survey a large group of people, asking them about their cheese consumption before bed and about their dreams/nightmares. A weakness of this design is6. Suppose researchers want to test the theory that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and carry out a study in which a group of 20 patients has their health assessed initially. They are instructed to eat an apple every day for a month, after which their health is reassessed to see whether or not it has improved overall.The design described is7. See erotic picture, bet big money, researchers contend reports that “when young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such as a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler…”To summarize their results, the researchers would compare8. Carnegie Mellon researchers recently conducted a study in which they influenced participants’ perceptions of their wealth by asking a question about annual income in a general survey. The first group was made to feel poor by asking the individuals to report their income on a scale that began at “less than $100,000” and increased in $100,000 increments, so that most respondents were in the lowest tier. The second group was made to feel subjectively wealthier by asking them to report income on a scale that began with “less than $10,000” and increased in $10,000 increments, so that most respondents were in a middle or upper tier. “Participants received $5 for taking the survey and then were given the chance to buy up to five scratch-off lottery tickets. Those in the first group bought an average of 1.27 tickets compared to 0.67 tickets bought by the second group.”What variable types are involved?9. The New York Times reports: “The older a man is, the more likely he is to father children who develop bipolar disorder as adults, a large Swedish study reports.Previous studies have found an association between paternal age and both autism and schizophrenia, but this is the first time a connection with bipolar illness has been suggested. The study appears in the September issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry.The researchers examined highly accurate Swedish government health records of more than seven million people with known biological parents to find 13,428 with bipolar disorder diagnosed at two or more separate hospital admissions. They matched each case with five controls, people of the same age and sex but without bipolar illness. They divided the fathers into five-year age categories beginning at 20.After statistically adjusting for the age of the mother, family history of psychotic disorders, education level and other factors, they found consistently increasing risk as fathers aged. The highest risk was in fathers 55 and older. For mothers, after adjusting for the fathers age, they found a statistically significant increase in only the 35 to 39 age group.”Which one of the following was treated as a response variable?10. “Men with egalitarian attitudes about the role of women in society earn significantly less on average than men who hold more traditional views about women’s place in the world… The comparisons were based on men and women working in the same kinds of jobs with the same levels of education and putting in the same number of hours per week. Men with traditional attitudes about gender roles earned $11,930 more a year than men with egalitarian views…”What is taken to be the response variable here?11. The Effect of Authority Status on Compliance describes an undergraduate psychology research study which recruited 29 female college students who were asked to complete a questionnaire. Afterwards, the researcher requested that they deliver an envelope to a remote part of campus. In some cases the researcher was made to appear as an authority figure in professional garb with labcoat. In other cases the researcher posed as a non-authority figure in jeans and a T-shirt. The researchers wanted to see if the students were more likely to agree to deliver the envelope if the request was made by the authority figure. Their purpose was to explore the idea that Nazis managed to manipulate people because of their willingness to comply with authority figures.Authority or non-authority status plays what role here?12. A survey reported that 56% of 5,300 business graduate students admitted having cheated.The number 0.56 is13. A study by the National Coffee Association found that 83% of the cups of coffee consumed by surveyed Americans were drunk during the morning.The number 0.83 is14. What is the variable of interest?15. Of 1,007 firearms recovered by a city’s police bureau’s Firearms Tracking Unit in 2007, only 12% had been reported as stolen.If we use the results to claim that approximately 12% of recovered firearms in the U.S. had been reported as stolen, there may be bias due to16. The Food and Drug Administration wanted to inspect plants around the world that manufacture drugs to be exported to the U.S. This stemplot shows the percentage of drug plants that the FDA inspected in ten countries that export products to the U.S. Stems represent percents and leaves represent tenths of a percent, the maximum is 12.0 percent.17. This histogram shows annual per capita spending on bakery products, recorded for 24 U.S. cities in 2006. How do we denote the mean and standard deviation of this data set?18. The shape is19. The New York Times reported on the prices of 40 different brands of lipstick. Here is a histogram of the data.20. Which one of these is a reasonable guess for the standard deviation, which measures typical distance of prices from their mean? (No calculations necessary.)