Suppose you read the following report in a monthly educational newsletter:  

“School principals’ charisma has positive effect on student achievement”

    Educational researcher Slim Bouaziz found that school principals’ “charisma” boosted the test scores of the students in their schools.  Bouaziz had reasoned that, just as the personality of CEOs can affect the performance of their companies, the personality of school principals can affect key performance outcomes of their schools.  More specifically, Bouaziz had hypothesized that the charisma of school principals would influence the academic performance of students in their schools.  To test this idea, Bouaziz used standardized leadership surveys to measure the charisma of 272 high school principals from school districts in major metropolitan areas.  He used standardized tests to assess the academic performance of the students in these schools.  Overall, across the entire sample, Bouaziz found a statistically significant correlation of .34 between the charisma of school principals and student academic performance.  The higher the charisma of the principal, the higher the academic performance of the students in the principal’s school.  Bouaziz concluded that his results supported his hypothesis—that the charisma of school principals had a positive effect on the academic performance of students in their schools.

1. Explain the issue of causality as it pertains to the study results, and why this is so important. Which causal model does the article assume?  Which causal model does Bouaziz assume? What is the basis for your answers?

2. Identify the type of research method that was used in the study (experimental, correlational, observational).