Question

Newborn Brain Damage Researchers studied 208 infants whose brains were temporarily deprived of oxygen due to complications at birth. When researchers detected oxygen deprivation, they randomly assigned babies to either usual care or to a whole-body cooling group. The goal was to see whether reducing body temperature for three days after birth increased the rate of survival without brain damage. What is the purpose of including the "usual care" treatment in the experiment? Group of answer choices To control for the placebo effect and keep it from confounding the result To create similar treatment groups so that a cause-and-effect relationship can be established To provide a baseline for judging the survival rates of infants who received whole-body cooling

Answer 1

Answer:

To provide a baseline for judging the survival rates of infants who received whole-body cooling

Step-by-step explanation:

In this case, the purpose of the experiment is to see whether reducing body temperature for three days after birth increased the rate of survival without brain damage.

Then, the proposed method (whole-body cooling) has to be contrasted with the baseline, in this case, the "usual care". If we want to know if this proposed method is statistically better, we have to compare with these baseline with random sampling out of the same population.

If it is not compared to nothing or to a new method, it wouldn't be possible to conclude if the method is better or not than the usual care.