Armand Conducts a Study for His Research Method Class

question 24

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 a large amount of within-group variance. State three causes of within-group variance in Armand's study.

---

Definitions:

Majoring

The process of specializing in a particular field or area of study within a broader educational program.

Graphical Device

A tool or mechanism used to create, design, or display data and information in a visual format.

Relative Frequency

The ratio of the number of times a particular value or event occurs to the total number of occurrences, used to estimate probabilities in samples.

Hours Worked

The total number of hours spent working by an individual or group in a specific period.