Question

At City Community College, every freshman must take English 101. The English department wants to know whether students who take this class in their second semester get better grades than students who take the class in their first semester. Which principle of experimental design can the English department best use to include a variety of students in both the first and second semester treatment groups of the study?

A. Blocking
B. Randomization
C. Replication
D. Direct control

Answer 1

The English department should use Randomization to assign students randomly to English 101 classes, ensuring no systematic differences between groups and attributing any grade differences to the semester in which the class was taken.

Step-by-step explanation:

The best principle of experimental design for the English department to use in order to include a variety of students in both treatment groups is B. Randomization.

Randomization is critical to ensure that there is no systematic difference between the groups except for the treatment being tested. This means students must be chosen and assigned to either the first or second semester English 101 class randomly.

With this method, it's unlikely that one group will be significantly different from the other in aspects like gender, ethnicity, or other variables that could affect the outcome. This helps in attributing any differences in grades to the timing of the course rather than preexisting differences.

Using random assignment, all participants would have an equal chance of being placed in either the group taking English 101 in their first semester or in their second semester. This method avoids the problem of lurking variables and ensures the integrity of the experiment, allowing for a valid comparison of grades between the two groups.