Question

Case 1: A certain psychologist was looking for the cause of failure among college students. She took a group of former students who had flunked out and a group of students who had received good grades. She gave both groups a self-esteem test and found that the group that flunked out scored lower on the test than did the group that received good grades. She concluded that low self-esteem is one of the causes of college failure and suggested further that a person with low self-esteem probably expects to fail and exhibits defeatist behavior in college, which eventually leads to failure.

What was the independent variable? What was the dependent variable and how is it measured?

Discuss the study's design. What kind of design was used? Was this design appropriate? Why or why not?

Was the experimenter justified in her conclusions? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Here failure is Indepenednt Varaible and Self esteem is dependent varaible  The Hypothesis is low self esteem results in failure. This is experimental design, she has used test format to study her hypothesis. Her design is partly correct.

She should have considered more factors for failure, is it only low self esteem or is it teaching staff, complex subject, 11th hour problem which a student might face. She has considered only one reason behind failure. She shoud use survey methods, open end questionnaires take open discussion of teacher and the flunked and passed students. All these things might help her in coming towards the eaxct reason of failure. The researcher is partly correct in her justifications   She can use observation method also for some months, in order to know exactly the causes of failure.