Question

You are designing an experiment to investigate the effect of odor on alertness. In this experiment, 10 subjects will experience the experimental condition (smelling peppermint) and another 10 will be given the control condition (odorless). You know that age significantly affects the sense of smell, with people over the age of 60 showing a decreased ability to identify odors. A total of 20 subjects of all ages (18-80) have signed up for the experiment. How would you assign them to the two groups using a matching technique? Describe your steps.

Answer 1

Answer to the question )
10 subjects to each group need to be assigned

the aim is to ensure that people are not just randomly assigned to any of the groups. Since age has an influence on the sense of smelling, hence it is important to form the two samples so as to ensure that the people of same age are compared for in the two samples leading to a matched pair dataset

Thus in this case: age group of the subjects varies from: (18 to 80)

4 subjects of age group: 18 to 30 are selected

2 of them are randomly assigned to either of the samples

4 subjects of age group: 30 to 45 years are selected

2 of them are randomly assigned to either of the samples

4 subjects of age group: 46 to 60 years are selected

2 of them are randomly assigned to either of the samples

4 subjects of age group 60 to 80 years are selected

2 of them are randomly assigned to either of the samples

.

Now while comparing the differences: people of sample age group are to be compared in the two samples, like this age wise pairs are formed in the samples, and this is what leads to the matching technique