Armand Conducts a Study for His Research Method Class

question 49

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 proposes that he replicate the study and double the number of participants he recruits. State which cause(s) of within-group variability will be helped by adding more participants and why this will help.

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