Final answer:
Weaker evidence is expected in the replicated study with half the students due to increased variability and a potentially larger p-value, reflecting less certainty in results.
Step-by-step explanation:
When replicating a study with exactly half the number of students as the original but with the same proportional breakdown in categories, you might expect to find weaker evidence for the research conjecture. This is because a smaller sample size generally leads to larger variability, making it harder to detect a true effect. With fewer subjects, the p-value may be larger, reflecting less certainty in the results due to the reduced sample size. Thus, the strength of the evidence is likely to be weaker compared to the larger original study.
Upon conducting the simulation for this investigation, if the p-value is still below the significance level (α = 0.05), it implies that the evidence against the null hypothesis is still considered statistically significant. However, the p-value is likely to be larger than what was obtained in the original study with more subjects. This would align with the expectation that a smaller sample size provides less definitive evidence.