The font matters! In general, high perceived effort is an impediment to changes

Question

The font matters! In general, high perceived effort is an impediment to changes in behavior, whether it is modifying your diet or adopting an exercise routine. Yet little is known about how individuals estimate effort for a novel behavior. Researchers divide 40 students into two groups of 20. The first group reads instructions for an exercise program printed in an easy-to-read font, and the second group reads identical instructions in a difficult-to-read font. They estimated how many minutes the program would take (open-ended) and used a 7-point rating scale to report whether they were likely to make the exercise program part of their daily routine (7 = very likely)^3. As hypothesized by the researchers, those reading about the exercise program in the more difficult-to-read font estimated that it would take longer and were less likely to make the exercise program part of their regular routine. Is this an experiment? Why or why not? What are the explanatory and response variables?

Explanation / Answer

yes this can be an experiment , where we check for likeliness of the 2 groups to take up the exercise programs ( where the 2 groups are one which read the instructions in a difficult font and the group which reads it in an easy font). We can test the means of the 2 groups to see if they differ significantly.

The explanatory variable in this case is type of font used; we can use indicator variables 0 and 1 for the 2 fonts. The response variable is the likeliness score.

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