Question

A skeptic of this research claims that the only reason couples with larger weddings have happier marriages is that rich people can afford large weddings, and rich people are happier. Which statement is the correct response to this critic?

Options:
a) The critic is correct because personal income is associated with relationship happiness after the researchers controlled for the number of guests at the wedding.
b) The critic is incorrect because the number of guests at the wedding is associated with relationship happiness even after the researchers controlled for personal income.
c) The critic is incorrect because the number of guests at the wedding has a larger beta than the beta for personal income in the regression table.
d) The critic is correct because the beta for the number of partners is larger than the beta for the number of guests at the wedding.

Answer 1

The critic is incorrect because the happiness associated with having more wedding guests remains significant even after controlling for personal income, meaning wealth is not the only factor.

Step-by-step explanation:

The critic is incorrect because the number of guests at the wedding is associated with relationship happiness even after the researchers controlled for personal income.

An explanation for this involves understanding how regression analysis works. When researchers control for a variable, like personal income, they account for its influence on the dependent variable, which in this case is relationship happiness. This means that any significant association between the number of wedding guests and relationship happiness is not simply because of variations in personal income levels among those surveyed.

If the variable ‘number of guests at a wedding’ still shows a strong association with happiness after controlling for income, this suggests that the size of the wedding has its own, independent impact on marital satisfaction.

It is important to not merely focus on the size of the beta coefficients in the regression analysis (as implied by choices c and d) without considering what the data signifies after controlling for relevant variables.