Jackson is interested in the effects of violent movies on aggressive behavior. He has some participants in his study watch Grand Torino (his "violent" movie)and others watch Marley and Me (his "nonviolent" movie). Unfortunately, in addition to these movies being very different in their violence level, they also differ in a lot of other ways (one is a comedy, the other isn't, and so forth). This means that Jackson's study has a ____.
A)factorial design
B)confounding variable
C)nonrandom assignment
D)random assignment

Question

Jackson is interested in the effects of violent movies on aggressive behavior.  He has some participants in his study watch Grand Torino (his "violent" movie)and others watch Marley and Me (his "nonviolent" movie). Unfortunately, in addition to these movies being very different in their violence level, they also differ in a lot of other ways (one is a comedy, the other isn't, and so forth). This means that Jackson's study has a ____.
A)factorial design
B)confounding variable
C)nonrandom assignment
D)random assignment

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Jackson's study has a confounding variable because the differences between the movies (such as genre, tone, etc.) besides their violence level could also influence the participants' aggressive behavior, making it difficult to isolate the effect of violence alone.

Jackson Is Interested in the Effects of Violent Movies on Aggressive