Statistics in Psychology – UGC NET – Solved PYQs

Included Topics: Statistics in Psychology: Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion. Normal Probability Curve. Parametric (t-test) and Non-parametric tests [Sign Test, Wilcoxon Signed rank test, Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Friedman]. Power analysis. Effect size.

1. On a Wechsler type intelligence scale, the subject has a deviation IQ 115. What would be his T score (Mean 50, SD = 10)? [JUNE 2015]

(1) 60
(2) 65
(3) 68
(4) 84

2. Which of the following statements are true about the Principal components analysis? [JUNE 2015]

I. Unities (values of 1) are retained in the diagonal spaces of the correlation matrix.
II. The first principal component explains maximum variance.
III. Principle components analysis follows Common Factor Model.
IV. Principle components analysis yields oblique unrotated factors.

Codes:

(1) I and II
(2) I and IV
(3) II and III
(4) I, II and IV

Directions (Q. Nos. 3-7) Read the following paragraph and answer the questions that follows:

The most popular method of measuring attitudes is to administer the attitude scale. Although, Bogardus Social Distance Scale (1925) is one of the first attitude scales, a major breakthrough in attitude scaling was made by LL Thurstone who developed the Law of Comparative Judgement (LCJ) and also proposed the three scaling methods-paired comparison, equal appearing intervals and successive intervals. In the paired comparison, every statement/stimulus is paired with every other statement/stimulus.

The computational methods of paired comparison are most extensively developed and use Thurston’s LCI directly for this purpose. Since, the paired comparison method has limitations in scaling large number of statements/stimuli, the two other methods-equal appearing intervals and successive intervals-were developed by Thurstone. The method of successive intervals was computationally laborious in the pre-computer era and hence, it was not so popular. In the classical scaling tradition, Guttmann developed the Scalogram technique and Edwards developed the scale discrimination technique.

Likert’s development of summated ratings represent an Important landmark in attitude measurement. It follows the traditional psychometric model.

Aiken and Groth-Mamatt (2009) pointed out that other scaling techniques, less frequently used for attitude assessment, include Osgood’s semantic differential, Q-sort, magnitude estimation, expectancy value scaling. Facet analysis, multi-dimensional scaling etc.