A researcher is interested in examining the impact of watching television on sch

Question

A researcher is interested in examining the impact of watching television on school grades. She recruits children between the ages of 5-7 and randomly assigns them to watch either educational or non-educational shows. She then measures their performance on a multi-subject test. Imagine that children in the educational show condition score an average of 85 points, while children in the non-educational show condition score an average of 79 points. The researcher runs her statistical analysis and gets a result of 3.41, p <. 05. Is there support for the research hypothesis? Explain these results in your own words.

Explanation / Answer

The results indicate that there is a support for the researcher’s hypothesis. If the p-value is less than 0.05, which is the case here, we reject the null hypothesis that there's no difference between the means and conclude that a significant difference does exist. In other words, it means the probability that the result of the statistical test is due to chance alone (which is a spurious result) is less than 5%. The researcher can therefore conclude that the differences between the participant groups are significant.

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