A Researcher Is Interested in Studying Changes in Marital Satisfaction

question 43

Multiple Choice

A researcher is interested in studying changes in marital satisfaction over the course of marriage. She hypothesizes that marital satisfaction is highest when couples are newly married, that it decreases during the middle years of marriage, but rises again during later years of marriage. In order to test her hypothesis, she recruits fifty married couples within each of the following conditions: (1) married less than 10 years; (2) married 15-20 years; (3) married more than 25 years. All 150 couples (50 from each condition) complete a standardized measure of marital satisfaction.
If the experimenter had reason to believe that the data would be better analyzed by a nonparametric test, which would be the most appropriate test?

• A) Wilcoxon's signed-ranks matched-pairs test
• B) The Mann-Whitney test
• C) Kruskal-Wallis test
• D) The Friedman test.

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Definitions:

Learning Theorists

Scholars who study how individuals acquire new knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values through various forms of training or experience.

Neurotransmitter Release

The process by which neurotransmitters are released from nerve endings or synapses into the synaptic cleft to transmit signals between neurons.

Dishabituation

The revival of a response that has been habituated, typically due to a novel stimulus interrupting the repetition.

Sensitization

An increased reaction to a stimulus following repeated exposure, typically in response to something negative or harmful.