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Using your comprehension of practical significance, decide whether the researcher should recommend this program, justify your decision based on the details in the case, and state which example from the course reading this scenario resembles.
Case context: A clinical researcher evaluates a new behavioral therapy program for social anxiety. The program demonstrates a statistically significant positive effect () compared to standard care. However, the program requires hours of individual clinical therapy and costs five times as much as existing, shorter treatments that yield almost the same improvement. The researcher must decide whether to recommend that local clinics adopt this program.
Question: Using your comprehension of practical significance, decide whether the researcher should recommend this program, justify your decision based on the details in the case, and state which example from the course reading this scenario resembles.
Sample answer: The researcher should not recommend the program. Although the program has a statistically significant positive effect, it lacks practical significance because the small benefits do not justify the high costs and the extensive time commitment ( hours of therapy) when compared to existing, cheaper treatments that work almost as well. This scenario closely resembles the course example of a new treatment for social phobia that has a statistically significant effect but is too weak to justify the time, effort, and financial costs of implementing it over cheaper, existing treatments.
Key points:
- Recommends against adopting the new program.
- Explains that the statistical significance does not translate to practical significance due to high time and financial costs.
- Compares the new program to existing, cheaper, and similarly effective treatments.
- Identifies this as matching the course example of a treatment for social phobia lacking practical significance.
Rubric: Students must decide not to recommend the program, justify this decision by explaining that the small difference in outcomes is not worth the excessive time and cost compared to cheaper alternatives that perform similarly, and correctly associate this with the social phobia treatment example from the course reading.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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