Re: How would you do this assignment?

[Tim Shearon]

.

>Despite popular belief, men are just as likely to 'help' as women are.
>In fact, one study indicated that they were more likely than women to
>engage in helping behavior. When confederate men and women were staged

>in a parking lot having apparently locked their keys in their car, 80%
>of the individuals who came to see if they needed help were men. (The
>staging was done so that equal numbers of men and women would pass by.)
>

Annette-
Here is my senario of how they'd try to think it through


I'll stick my neck out and point out that there is nothing in the description of the research to allow us to assume random selection or even random assignment of subjects to (what?) conditions. Apparently the only conditions are male vs female in need of help. That being the case then it is NOT experimental. However, if one assumes or is told that the male vs female needing help IS randomly assigned then one could slip and think it is experimental (at least more so). However, most traditions want a control condition for saying it is experimental and a control condition does not even seem to make sense in this study. I'd say the best one can do is look at the correlation of male vs female helping and how that interacts with the gender of the helper. Cause there's the rub. How do you randomly assign a subject to be male or female?!?!? That's the real reason I say it is correlational at best!!!

BTW- (Also, to ask this assumes that we all define correlational and experimental in the same ways or that we have those as dicotomies with no gray areas in between. i.e., different texts and authors define experimental in a variety of ways- it would have been easier to answer, for example, if you told us how your text defines the terms since it is arbitrary and different for different texts- what you want is for your students to perform relative to the text you are using and your lectures). :) _______________________________________________________
Timothy O. Shearon, PhD
Albertson College of Idaho
Department of Psychology
2112 Cleveland Blvd
Caldwell, Idaho

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
208-459-5840