Identifying a study as correlational or experimental can be rather difficult because both involve two (or more) variables. The difference is whether one variable predicts the other variable (correlation) or causes the other variable (experiment). For each of the following, identify whether the research scenario is experimental or correlational. Name the independent and dependent variables if it is an experimental design or the direction (negative or positive) if it is a correlational design. The correct answers are given below.
University officials have noticed that there is a relationship between scores on the ACT and performance in college. Students with the highest scores tend to do the best in school.
A researcher was interested in whether people were more likely or less likely to help someone in distress when others are present. Some subjects were tested when they alone witnessed a person in distress, while others were tested with many people present. The researcher discovered that witnesses were much more likely to help when they alone viewed the person in distress.
In an attempt to determine which method would assure the best class attendance, an educational psychologist had one teacher reward students for attending class with extra points, a second teacher punished absences by deducting points, a third teacher scolded students for absences, and a fourth teacher did nothing. Attendance was best in the first class where the teacher rewarded the students.
A researcher who was suspicious that hyperactivity in children was related to the amount of sugar in their diet recorded both sugar intake and activity level for a sample of children over a five-month period. The results indicated that those children who had consumed the most sugar tended to be the most active.
In an investigation of drug abuse, it was noted that there was a relationship between the age at which an individual first started experimenting with drugs and the severity of the drug-abuse problem. Those who experimented with drugs at the earliest age tended to be those with the most drug-abuse problems.
To investigate the relationship between anxiety and test performance, three different groups of subjects were tested under one of the following conditions: high anxiety, moderate anxiety, and low anxiety. The moderate anxiety group performed better on the test than either the high or low anxiety groups.
In a study of animal motivation, researchers varied the number of hours the laboratory animals were deprived of food. While some had food continuously available, others were deprived for either twelve hours or twenty-four hours. The researchers discovered that the animals deprived for twenty-four hours worked harder for food than did the others.
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