A psychology professor wants to test the effectiveness of providing students in his introductory experimental psychology class with an outline with his weekly lecture notes. He forms two groups within his class, each containing 24 students. The experimental group receives an outline of the professor’s weekly lectures, and the control group receives no outline. Grades at the end of the semester are compared between the two groups. On the basis of this description, discuss what flaw is most evident in the design of the experiment. Identify and design and discuss an alternative procedure that might eliminate the flaws.
The most evident flaw in this experiment is that the participants belong to the same class. There is a great likelihood that students engage in discussion about the experiment with each other. Consequently, the students receiving the outlines may even share it with their classmates. This can lead to error in the measurement of the IV-DV relationship. Thus, an alternative procedure that can be used instead is using students studying the same course but belonging to different classes. This would at least reduce the likehood to excessive contact between the experimental and control group.
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