Final answer:
The concept described is false; random selection involves choosing participants for a study, while random assignment refers to distributing these participants across different treatment groups within the experiment to control for lurking variables and support causal inferences.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that random selection refers to how subjects are assigned to experimental or control groups is false. Random selection pertains to the method of choosing subjects from a population to become participants in a study, ensuring that every individual has an equal chance of being chosen. On the other hand, random assignment is the process used to assign these selected participants to different groups within an experiment, such as the experimental group or control group, in a random manner.
This strategy is fundamental for experimental design as it helps ensure that each group is comparable and that observed effects are due to the manipulation of the independent variable rather than preexisting differences between individuals.
Random assignment is particularly critical because it minimizes the impact of lurking variables, which are unobserved variables that could influence the outcome of the study. By randomly distributing participants across groups, random assignment reduces the likelihood that these lurking variables are unequally distributed across the groups, which could otherwise confound the results.