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A researcher wants to investigate how both 'Years of Education' and 'Annual Income' relate to 'Job Satisfaction.' If the researcher decides to use a non-experimental factorial design, how must they handle the independent variables, and what type of relationship can they ultimately claim to have found?
Question: A researcher wants to investigate how both 'Years of Education' and 'Annual Income' relate to 'Job Satisfaction.' If the researcher decides to use a non-experimental factorial design, how must they handle the independent variables, and what type of relationship can they ultimately claim to have found?
Sample answer: The researcher must merely measure, rather than actively manipulate, both 'Years of Education' and 'Annual Income.' Ultimately, they can only claim to have found a correlational relationship, as this design cannot establish definitive cause-and-effect relationships.
Key points:
- The independent variables must be merely measured.
- No active manipulation of variables can occur.
- The resulting claims can only be correlational, not definitive cause-and-effect.
Rubric: Awards full points for correctly stating that the variables must be measured (not manipulated) and for identifying that only a correlational (not causal) relationship can be claimed.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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A researcher wants to investigate how both 'Years of Education' and 'Annual Income' relate to 'Job Satisfaction.' If the researcher decides to use a non-experimental factorial design, how must they handle the independent variables, and what type of relationship can they ultimately claim to have found?