Armand Conducts a Study for His Research Method Class

question 41

Essay

Armand conducts a study for his research method class.He is curious as to whether watching romantic movies makes people more committed to their romantic relationship.He collects a sample of men in dating relationships and divides them into two groups.One group watches a 5-minute clip of a movie in which the main characters are having a romantic first date.The second group watches a 5-minute clip from the same movie in which the main characters break up.After the participants watch the movie clip,they are then asked to write a sentence about their relationship.Armand counts the number of uses of the words we and us as a measure of commitment.After conducting the study,he finds that there is not a statistically significant difference between his two groups.

-Armand's professor suggests that the null effect may be due to insufficient between-group variance.Describe two ways that Armand's study may have had poor between-group variance.

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Definitions:

Sample Means

are the average values calculated from a subset of a population.

Sum of Squares

A statistical measure used in various contexts, representing the sum of the squared differences between each observation and the overall mean.

F-test

A statistical test used to compare the variances of two populations and determine if they are equal.

Population Means

The average value of a characteristic in a population, representing the central tendency.