A federal government think tank wanted to investigate whether a job training pro

Question

A federal government think tank wanted to investigate whether a job training program helps the families who are on welfare to get off the welfare program. The researchers at this agency selected 10,000 families at random from the list of all families that were on welfare. Of these 10,000 families, the agency randomly selected 5000 families and offered them free job training. The remaining 5000 families were not offered such job training. After 3 years the two groups were com- pared in regard to the percentage of families who got off welfare. Is this an observational study or a designed experiment? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

A designed experiment is a systematic series of experiments where we change the input variables and the response obtained due to such change. Here each subject is randomly put into one of the two groups under study.

An observational study draws conclusion from a sample of a population in such a manner that the researcher is not able to control the independent variable.

In our case, each family is randomly offered free job training or not. Hence the assignment is controlled by researcher ( though randomly ) - hence this is a designed experiment and not an observational study.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse A
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.