Practice question · True or false
A cross-sectional finding that 70-year-olds score lower than 30-year-olds shows that reasoning declines with age.
Hints
- Were the two groups ever comparable?
- They were born forty years apart.
Show the answer
False
Why
False. The groups differ in birth cohort as well as age — in schooling, nutrition and test familiarity — so the design confounds ageing with cohort. Longitudinal studies following the same people show far smaller declines, which is why the two designs disagree so consistently on this question.
Practise Advanced Methodologies
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Psychology I is free to start.
More questions on Advanced Methodologies
- Order the steps of conducting a meta-analysis.
- A longitudinal study follows the same people for thirty years; a cross-sectional study compares different age…
- Sort each strength or weakness under the design it describes.
- A cross-sectional study finds 70-year-olds score lower on reasoning than 30-year-olds. Why does the Flynn…
- A meta-analysis pools ten studies of 40 participants each and reports a precise overall effect. Why does…