Does the study in the article below use the experimental method or the correlation method and why? I'm stuck and keep going back and fourth on it
Soccer Referees Hate the Tall Guys
Many of soccer's greatest players have been small fries. Diego Maradona is only 5'5". Lionel Messi (pictured) is 5'7". Pele towers over both of them at 5'8". According to new research, these little guys have, in addition to their superhuman quickness and skill, an extra advantage: Shrimps get all the calls.
Niels van Quaquebeke and Steffen R. Giessner, researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, compiled refereeing data from seven seasons of the German Bundesliga and the UEFA Champions League, as well as three World Cups (123,844 fouls in total), and showed that on average the perpetrators of fouls were about one-third of an inch taller than the victims. When two players were involved in illicit contact, the referee was more likely to call an infraction against the taller guy, especially as the height difference increased. When the disparity was relatively small, less than two inches, the smaller players got the call 52% of the time. But when one player had at least 3.9 inches on the other, the taller one was whistled about 59% of the time.
The researchers admit that taller players could just be bigger, stronger, and more likely to foul, but they also argue that an unconscious bias is involved in the referee's decisions. To strengthen the claim, they performed an additional study in which sports fans were shown pictures of players of differing heights running toward the ball and were told that one of them ended up on the ground. When the smaller player hit the turf, fans were more likely to assume that he hadn't taken a dive but had been fouled.
Thanks guys
This looks like correlation. No experiments were done, but the researchers took existing statistics and correlated them to produce a conclusion.
At the end of the article they did do an experiment?
I don't see what experiment the researchers performed. What was it?
Ohh -- I see the experiment now.
But the bulk of the argument is correlational, not experimental.
Based on the information provided in the article, the study uses the correlation method. Here's why:
The researchers compiled refereeing data from seven seasons of the German Bundesliga, the UEFA Champions League, and three World Cups. They analyzed a total of 123,844 foul incidents in the dataset. The researchers then compared the height difference between the perpetrators of fouls and the victims. They found that, on average, the perpetrators were about one-third of an inch taller than the victims.
To strengthen their claim, the researchers performed an additional study using pictures of players of differing heights running toward the ball. They showed these pictures to sports fans and told them that one of the players ended up on the ground. The researchers observed that when the smaller player fell, fans were more likely to assume that he hadn't taken a dive but had been fouled.
Based on these methods, it seems that the study used correlation in analyzing the height difference between the perpetrators and victims of fouls. The researchers did not manipulate any variables or attempt to control for other factors that could influence the outcome. Instead, they looked for patterns and relationships between the height difference and the likelihood of fouls being called. This approach is characteristic of a correlation study.