Observational Study Survey Experiment

You want to see if students who have a 4.0 grade point average study more than those who do not.

• experiment

• observational study

To test the effects of breakfast on grades I ask my students if they ate breakfast and then compare the breakfast eaters grades to the non-breakfast eaters. This is an example of:

• Observational study

• Experiment

Dr. Larson was interested in whether classical music helps students perform better on a test. Dr. Larson randomly assigned half of the study's participants to a group that listened to classical music while taking a test. The other half of the participants did not listen to music while taking a test. Which research method is most appropriate?

• sample survey

• experiment

• observational study

• census

To test the effects of eating breakfast on test grades. I randomly select half of my students and feed them breakfast while giving the other half nothing to eat. I then give them all a test and compare the test grades of each group.

Is this an experiment or an observational study?

• Experiment

• Observational study

• Neither

• Both experiment and observational study.

Which scenario is best described as an observational study?

• For a class project, students in Health class ask every 10^th student entering the school if they eat breakfast in the morning

• A social researcher wants to learn whether or not there is a link between attendance and grades. She gathers data from 15 school districts

• A researcher wants to learn whether or not there is a link between children’s daily amount of physical activity and their overall energy level. During lunch at the local high school, she distributed a short questionnaire to students in the cafeteria

• Sixty seniors taking a course in Advanced Algebra Concepts are randomly divided into two classes. One class uses a graphing calculator all the time, and the other class never uses graphing calculators. A guidance counselor wants to determine whether there is a link between graphing calculator use and students’ final exam grades

Individuals are observed and variables are measured without controlling the individuals or the environment

• population

• observational study

• experiment

• secondary data

In an ________________, a researcher observes and measures characteristics of interest of part of the population but does not change existing conditions.

• Experiment

• Observational Study

You want to see if students who have a 4.0 grade point average study more than those who do not.

• survey

• observational study

• experiment

In a certain school, students can choose whether to eat in the school’s cafeteria. A reporter working for the school’s newspaper polled students on their reactions to changes in the menu at the cafeteria. For each student leaving the cafeteria in one 20-minute time period, the reporter used a die to determine whether to stop the student and ask how he or she felt about the new menu. In the reporter’s article it was stated that a random sample of the students showed that 23% of the school’s student population was happy with the new menu. Which of the following statements is true?

• Because each student leaving the cafeteria was randomly selected and could choose to answer or not, this is a random sample of the student population, and the 23% is an accurate measurement of the school population’s view of the new menu.

• Because students self-selected whether to eat in the cafeteria, the sampling method might be biased and the sample might not be representative of all students in the school.

• The survey would have been more effective if the reporter had collected the data in one 10-minute time period rather than in one 20-minute time period.

• The survey would have been more effective if students who cared about the food could have called the reporter to tell how they felt about the new menu, so that only students with opinions on the subject would have been surveyed.

• Because no treatment was imposed on the students eating in the cafeteria, one cannot make any conclusions about the new menu.

a study in which the researcher attempts to understand cause-and-effect relationships without assigning subjects to groups or deciding which treatments each group receives

• survey

• observational study

• experiment