Final answer:
The students' design for an experiment to compare productivity involves creating an experimental group and a control group to test the effect of a variable. A focus on minimizing sampling and experimenter biases makes their findings more reliable. The null hypothesis serves as a basis for statistical testing to determine the experiment's results.
Step-by-step explanation:
Students are designing an experiment to compare productivity, and in this context, they are focusing on key aspects of experimental design. An essential part of this process is the establishment of two groups: the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group receives the experimental manipulation, which is the variable being tested, while the control group does not receive this manipulation. This setup is critical to determine the causal effect of the experimental variable on the outcome of interest. To ensure the validity of the results, it is important to minimize the sampling bias by randomly assigning participants to each group, and to control for experimenter bias by keeping the researchers who interact with participants or analyze the data blind to group assignments.
The null hypothesis is a formal statement that there is no effect or no difference, which researchers aim to test against the alternative hypothesis that there is an effect or difference. If the experiment shows a significant difference in productivity between the experimental and control groups, the null hypothesis would be rejected, indicating that the manipulation has an impact.