Question

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group of people in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. This procedure is known as a __________.

Answer 1

I believe the answer is: Known-groups paradigm

A study is considered to have Known-groups paradigm if the researchers understand that the measure that they take will discriminate a certain groujp of subjects because of their known behavior.

From the case above Dr. Sheffield create a test to determine whether the subject unable to resist impulses to gamble.

The subjects that he use is a group of ex-gamblers who acknowledge they have a gambling problem (gamblers anonymous) and a group of ex-alcoholic who acknowledge they have drinking problem (AA).  We can say with high certainty that dr. Sheffield knew really well that people on GA will have higher scores. He just want to how big is the difference compared to the scores from AA group.