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, each of them using the computer program four times per week. She creates a group of girls to serve as a comparison group and they do 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
A)internal validity
B)external validity
C)internal reliability
D)external reliability

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The experimental design is flawed because gender is a confounding variable, which means that any observed effect on learning math could be due to gender differences rather than the computer program itself. This lowers the internal validity of the study, as it is unclear whether the observed effects are due to the independent variable (the computer program) or the confounding variable (gender).

A Psychologist Is Interested Looking at the Effectiveness of a New