A Researcher Wishes to Compare How Students at Two Different

question 7

Essay

A researcher wishes to compare how students at two different schools perform on a math test. He randomly selects 40 students from each school and obtains their test scores. He pairs the
first score from school A with the first school from school B, the second score from school A
with the second school from school B and so on. He then performs a hypothesis test for
matched pairs. Is this approach valid? Why or why not? If it is not valid, how should the
researcher have proceeded?

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Definitions:

Placebo Control Group

In research, a group of participants that receives an inert substance or treatment to compare against the effects of the actual drug or intervention being tested.

Inactive Treatment

A treatment or therapy that lacks active components, often used as a control condition in experimental research to assess the efficacy of treatments.

Daily Check-ins

The practice of regularly reviewing one's feelings, tasks, or wellness, often used for maintaining mental health or team productivity.

Internal Validity

Extent to which all factors that could extraneously affect a study’s results are controlled within a laboratory study.