Question

Jennifer wants to see if the color of the testing room causes test anxiety. She asks 100 participants to come to a modified classroom, and as they walk in, she asks each person to choose either a testing cubicle painted bright red or a testing cubicle painted off white. On the basis of their choices, participants spend 20 minutes in one or the other cubicle solving challenging math problems. Then, they complete a survey asking them questions about how anxious they were during the math test. What's wrong with Jennifer's experiment?

Answer 1

Answer: Jennifer didn't randomly assign participants to the control and experimental group.

Step-by-step explanation: In the scenario discussed above, Jennifer failed to perform a random assignment of the participants who took part in the survey, that is the experimental group, those who receive the treatment and the control group, those who don't. Random assignment is required in other to address the issue of bias in our experiment. She was supposed to perform a random assignment of the participants to the two groups instead of asking them to make a choice.