Question

RESEARCH STUDY 13.1: Dr. Fletcher is interested in whether joining a fraternity/sorority causes people to become more concerned about their attractiveness and appearance. He recruits a group of 55 freshmen (25 males, 30 females) who are planning to go through fraternity/sorority recruitment on his campus. After they join, he gives them a measure of attractiveness concern/appearance concern (the Body Concern Scale). If Dr. Fletcher is interested in a causal relationship between joining a fraternity/sorority and attractiveness/appearance concern, why doesn’t he conduct a true experiment

Answer 1

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Answer: Because he was unable to randomly assign participants to join a fraternity/sorority.

Explanation:

It is possible to study private organizations, like fraternities or sororities, as long as the required permissions have been obtained.

It is possible to measure body concern: the Body Concern Scale.

The issue is not that more people or an equal number of males and females should be recruited. The actual impossibility is that the researcher can not randomly assign participants to join a fraternity or sorority, because that is a major and very personal decision. So the researcher had to work with those who wanted to join and actually got in.