Explain why these unmanaged participant, situational, and task variables threaten the validity of the study's conclusions, and explain what researchers must do to resolve this issue.
Case context: A psychology student is replicating the expressive writing experiment to study its effects on physical health. In their study, participants are allowed to complete their writing tasks either at home or in a laboratory, at any time of day they choose. Some participants type their entries on tablets, while others write them by hand in journals. Additionally, the researcher does not gather information on the participants' baseline writing abilities, gender, or diets.
Question: Explain why these unmanaged participant, situational, and task variables threaten the validity of the study's conclusions, and explain what researchers must do to resolve this issue.
Sample answer: These unmanaged variables threaten the study's validity because they can independently influence physical health or introduce unintended variability. Participant variables like baseline writing ability, gender, and diet can affect physical health on their own. Situational and task variables like the writing medium and time of day introduce outside variability. To resolve this, researchers must hold these factors constant so they can separate the actual impact of expressive writing from these extraneous variables.
Key points:
- Explain how participant variables (baseline writing ability, gender, diet) can independently affect physical health.
- Explain how situational/task variables (writing medium, time of day) introduce unintended variability.
- Demonstrate comprehension that holding these variables constant is necessary to isolate the actual impact of expressive writing.
Rubric: A high-quality response should: 1) Explain that participant variables (writing ability, gender, diet) can independently affect the health outcome. 2) Explain that situational/task variables (writing medium, location, time of day) introduce unintended variability. 3) State that the solution is to hold these extraneous variables constant to isolate the impact of expressive writing.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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