A psychologist is interested looking at the effectiveness of a new computer program in helping students learn math.She decides to test this new program with a group of middle school students.At this particular school,the boys and girls tend to be disruptive when they are in the same classroom,so she decides to run them in separate groups in the experiment.She creates a group of boys who each use the computer program four times per week.She creates a group of girls to serve as a comparison group and they not get the computer program.This experimental design is flawed because gender is a confounding variable and as a result the following has been lowered:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Gender is a confounding variable in this experimental design because it is not being controlled for, meaning that any differences found between the two groups (boys using the program and girls not using the program) could be due to gender rather than the effectiveness of the computer program. This lowers the internal validity of the experiment, as it cannot be determined with confidence that the computer program is causing any differences observed between the groups. External validity and reliability are not necessarily affected by the inclusion of a confounding variable.

A Psychologist Is Interested Looking at the Effectiveness of a New