Students in an Introductory Statistics class at BYU-Idaho were studying prices of cold cereal at grocery stores in Rexburg. To g
et a sample of cold cereal prices, they went to Albertson's and rolled a die to decide which box from the left of the top shelf they would start on. They then recorded every 6th cereal after the first, moving from left to right down the shelves, recording the name, size, and price of each cereal in their sample. Is this study an experiment or an observational study, and why
The study illustrated in the question is an observational study. It is referred to as an observational study, because in this case, the price of the individual cereals us not being controlled by the students. They've no control over it.
If it was an experiment, there'll have been a control group and the students will have control over the price. Also, the sampling methods used here is a systematic random sampling.
