A researcher wants to study the effects of sleep deprivation o...

Question

A researcher wants to study the effects of sleep deprivation on motor skills. Eighteen people volunteer for the experiment: Jake, Arya, Xavier, Nyla, Shaniece, Chen, Juan, Hana, Nia, Ansel, Liam, Bruno, Mei, Zoey, Kayla, Liam, Sofia, and Kai. Use a random number generator to choose nine subjects for the treatment group. The other nine subjects will go into the control group. List the subjects in each group. Tell which method you used to generate the random numbers.

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone, let's take a look at this next problem. A researcher is planning an experiment to study the effects of sleep deprivation on motor skills. There are 18 volunteers, and he needs to assign 9 participants to the treatment group who will be sleep deprived, and the remaining 9 to the control group who will not. Which method should the researcher use to assign subjects to the two groups and why? A Let participants choose their group to increase comfort and cooperation. random assignment to reduce bias and ensure both groups are similar. Select the 1st 9 alphabetically to keep the process simple. Or assigned based on age to ensure older participants are in the control group. So pretty easy to rule out choice D. Oops, should be read to cross that out. Because, again, we're studying the effects of sleep deprivation, that definitely has a very good chance of having a different effect on younger versus older people. So, by putting older participants in the control group and younger ones in the treatment group, you are definitely introducing a big possible source of bias. So, if we want to make sure that our two groups are similar to each other, the best way will be choice B, random assignment. So, for instance, a random number generator. To select the participant, if we give every participant a number, and then use a random number generator to pick 9 to be in one group and 9 to be in the other. It's random, shouldn't introduce any bias and would lead to similar groups. Choice A letting the participants choose their own group, also definitely a big source of bias, as participants presumably might choose to be sleep deprived or not, maybe depending on how sleep deprivation affects them. If they feel worse when they're sleepy, they might actively avoid being in the sleep deprivation group. And then choice C, select the 1st 9 alphabetically, you keep the process simple. Well, this is definitely going to be a better method than A or D. But not as good as just random assignment. For instance, alphabetically, you might risk something that causes people. Whose names are closer in the alphabet to cause them to have some sort of shared characteristic different from the other group. So, one thing, for instance, if you were using last names, you might see certain people with certain ethnic backgrounds having last names, more likely to have begin into certain letters. So this could introduce bias in terms of how the two groups turn out. So once again We're looking for an experiment about sleep deprivation. We need to assign participants to a treatment group and a control group. And we want to make sure these groups have, you know, similar characteristics, that they don't have any unintentional bias. What method should be used to assign subjects? And the best one here will be choice B, random assignment, and why would that be best to reduce bias and ensure that both groups are similar. See you in the next video.

Key Concepts

Random Sampling

Control Group vs. Treatment Group

Random Number Generator

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