A health and wellness coach is planning an experiment in order to find out if standing instead of sitting improves memory. Some of her twenty participants will memorize as many words from a list as possible while sitting, and the rest will do the same while standing. She will then record the numbers of words memorized and compare the averages of both groups.
If the health and wellness coach wants her experiment results to be meaningful, which is the best way to determine the group of participants who will memorize words while standing? ( I chose C)
A. place those who prefer to stand in the standing group
B. place those who prefer to sit in the standing group
C. place ten randomly chosen participants in the standing group and the rest in the sitting group
D. place ten randomly chosen participants in the group they prefer and the rest in the standing group
I agree, but it would be even better if you reversed the conditions later.
The best way to determine the group of participants who will memorize words while standing in order to ensure meaningful experiment results is to choose option C: place ten randomly chosen participants in the standing group and the rest in the sitting group.
By randomly choosing participants for the standing group, the health and wellness coach eliminates any potential bias or confounding factors that could affect the results. This helps ensure that both groups are representative and comparable.
Randomly assigning participants to each group also helps to achieve a balanced representation of the population, which increases the generalizability of the experiment's findings. This means that the results can be more confidently applied to a larger population beyond just the 20 participants involved in the study.
Therefore, option C is the best choice for determining the group of participants who will memorize words while standing in order to obtain meaningful results for the experiment.