To test the effects of eating on learning, Professor Lee permits her morning class to bring snacks to class but forbids her afternoon class from bringing snacks. To measure performance, she counts the number of "intelligent questions" asked by students in each class, and reports getting more such questions in the morning class. What are two serious flaws in this experiment?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The experiment lacks random assignment, which means that the groups may not be equivalent in other ways beyond the variable being tested (snacking). This could introduce confounding variables. Additionally, there is a lack of blind observations, which means that the experimenter's expectations may bias their observations of the students. There are no issues with the number of dependent or independent variables, and demand characteristics or the presence of too many independent variables are not relevant to this experiment.

To Test the Effects of Eating on Learning, Professor Lee