Question

Caitlin is interested in studying how the quality of someone’s romantic relationship affects his or her ability to solve problems. Because she has a causal hypothesis, she needed to conduct an experiment. Because she cannot randomly assign people to high- and low-quality relationships, she came up with a creative idea for manipulating her IV: She will have her participants write a positive or negative story about their current romantic relationship and then have them immediately solve some math problems (DV).

a. If she has some people write a narrative about how much they love and cherish their partner and has others write a narrative about the things their partner does that annoy or frustrate them, how strong do you think this manipulation will be? How can she make sure her manipulation worked?

b. Caitlin is a little concerned that the effect of relationship quality will be weak, and she wants to be sure to detect it. What can she do to make sure her math problem’s dependent variable is a sensitive measure of problem solving?

c. What can she do to make sure her math problem’s dependent variable is a construct valid measure of problem solving?

d. What else can Caitlin do to make sure she has the best study possible to detect this difficult-to-find effect? (What design should she use and why? How many participants could she use and why? What details of the experimental situation should she be thinking about and why?)

Answer 1