Studies
A study in which subjects are randomly assigned to treatments in order to try to prove a cause and effect relationship
What is an experiment?
People (human beings) who are studied in an experiment
What are subjects?
Experimental units assigned to a baseline treatment to be used as a basis of comparison
What is a control group?
The process of assigning experimental units to treatment groups in order to minimize the risk of bias
What is randomization?
Just kidding. The question "Do you favor cracking down on illegal gun sales?" is an example of ...
What is response bias?
A study in which a researcher simply records what they see in order to determine if there are associations between variables
What is an observational study?
Individuals on which an experiment is conducted
What are experimental units?
When neither the subjects nor the people who have contact with them know which treatment a subject has received
What is double blind?
An attempt to limit sources of variation, other than the factors we are testing, by making conditions as similar as possible for all treatment groups
What is control?
Just kidding. I ask a question on cable TV and ask people to respond to it. This would result in ...
What is voluntary response bias?
An observational study in which subjects are followed to understand future outcomes
What is a prospective study?
A variable whose amounts are manipulated in order to assess its effects on the subjects of an experiment
What is a factor?
When either the subjects or the people who have contact with them do not know which treatment a subject has received
What is single blind?
When the levels of one factor are associated with the levels of another factor so their effects cannot be separated
What is confounding?
In conducting a poll a number of people I contact decline to participate. My poll would suffer from ...
What is non-response bias?
An observational study in which subjects are selected and then their previous conditions or behaviors are studied
What is a retrospective study?
Specific amounts that the experimenter chooses for a factor
What are levels?
A "fake" treatment given to a control group that looks and feels just like the treatment(s) being studied
What is a placebo?
When groups of experimental units are similar, they are gathered into these groups
What are blocks?
I want to learn how people feel about prices at technology stores, so I stand outside one Best Buy store one day and ask them. This sampling method is ...
What is convenience sampling?
When an observed difference is too large to believe that it occurred naturally
What is statistically significant?
The combination of all levels with all the factors
What are treatments?
The tendency of many human subjects to show a response even when given a "fake" treatment
What is the placebo effect?
A type of study in which subjects who are similar in ways not under study may be grouped together and then compared with each other on the variables of interest
What are matched pairs?
I conduct a phone survey using the telephone book as my source. I call multiple people's land line phones. This study would suffer from ...
What is undercoverage bias?