Better late? An experimenter wished to determine whether there is a relationship

Question

Better late? An experimenter wished to determine whether there is a relationship between children's IQs and their mothers' ages when they were born. Using school records, a list was compiled of 10-year-olds whose mothers were over 45, and a second list was compiled of 10-years-olds whose mothers were 30 or under. The experimenter randomly sampled 50 children from each list and administered the Standford-Binet intelligence test to them. The IQs were found to be considerably higher for the children of older mothers, and the difference was significant beyond the 0.001 level. The experimenter concluded that a woman should postpone childbearing until later in life to ensure a high IQ for her offspring. Comment on the appropriateness of the experimenter's conclusion.

Explanation / Answer

The experimenter has used independent, random samples of same size and result has been significant. The type of validity in the researcher's study is found to be a construct one, where the test measures an tentative proposition [H0: there is no difference in mean IQ scores for ten graded students for mothers over 45 and mothers at thirty or under]. But the reliability of the test would be confirmed, when the test would yield consistently same results over a time. If the results are found to be significant for repeated measures, then the test can be concluded reliable and result can be generalized. Until then the experimenter's conclusion cannot be called for.

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