Confound Study

Answer the same 4 questions for each example. Type out your answer please!

1. What is/are the IV(s)?

2. What is/are the DV(s)?

3. Identify any confounding variables.

4. Propose a method to "unconfound" the experiment

1. Based upon reports of increased violent crime in other parts of Oklahoma, the newly incorporated town of Hillsborough creates a law banning people from bringing handguns within the town limits. After passing the law, the town council also starts to collect data on violent crime that occurs within the town limits. For the year following the handgun ban, they find that the likelihood of a Hillsborough resident being a victim of violent crime is less than one-in-a-thousand. The town council members all seek re-election, claiming that their law has made Hillsborough a safer place.

2. Every third customer who enters the supermarket is asked to participate in a study of consumer preferences. Participant are shown two containers of potato chips. The first container (labeled "Crunchy Chips, in bright cheerful colors) contains the following ingredients: Potatoes, oil, and salt. The second container (labeled "Gumshoe Chips" in dull, unattractive colors) contains the following ingredients: Potatoes, oil, salt, monosodium glutamate, calcium silicate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, polymorphosperversinate, artificial flavor, and artificial color. Participants examine both packages and indicate the one they would be more likely to buy, assuming the price of the two items is equal. Out of 236 shoppers, 232 select "Crunchy Chips" as the product they would most likely purchase. The researchers conclude that shoppers prefer products with fewer additives.

3. An airport administrator investigated the attention spans of air traffic controllers to determine how many incoming flights the average controller can coordinate at the same time. Each randomly selected controller was tested, without his or her knowledge, by a computer program that fed false flight information to a computer terminal. The controller was first tested receiving information from one plane, then two, and by the end of the session the controller was coordinating 10 planes simultaneously. The administrator analyzed the errors collected by the computer program. The analysis revealed that the maximum number of planes a controller could handle without making potentially fatal errors was six planes. Also, no errors occurred when only one to three planes were incoming. He concluded that a controller should never coordinate more than six incoming flights.