Discussion Questions

Xavier has developed a lab experiment to test the hypotheses of his study. In lab experiments, control and manipulation are introduced to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables in an artificial setting.

1a. Describe how Xavier manipulates the independent variable and the moderating variable in this study.

1b. Although Xavier has pretested the manipulation of product involvement, he has also included a manipulation check for involvement in his study. Why would he have done that?
You have just read an article (Hetherington and MacDiarmid, 1993) that shows that 92% of the chocolate addicts are female. Hence, you suspect that gender is a nuisance factor in this study (recall that candy bars feature in the low involvement movies).

2a. Explain, based on the afore-mentioned research finding, why and how ‘gender' may affect the results of the study if Xavier would not control for gender?

2b. Explain (in detail) possible ways in which Xavier can control for gender in this study.

3a. Which factors affect the internal validity of Xavier's study given the experimental design he is using? Explain.

3b. Are the findings of this study generalizable to other settings (for instance other products), people (consumers in general), and events (product placements in movies or video games)? In other words, how do you feel about the external validity of this study?

4a. Xavier has indicated that he wants to give the participants a cover story. What could be the purpose of this cover story?

4b. Do you think that telling a cover story is ethical? Why not)?