Question

Ms. A. Lee is an advisor for the Walton College of Business and she is often asked by students what they should major in if they want to make a lot of money. Of course, her bias was to recommend the Walton College, but in order to make this recommendation with some evidence behind her she conducted a study in which she compared salaries (6 years after graduation) for a random sample of U. of A. graduates. She divided them into 2 groups: those who graduated from the Walton College and those who had any other major in the university. She entered her data into an Excel spreadsheet as illustrated below.

Walton Alumni Non-Walton Alumni
78000 45000
74000 54000
70000 52000
89000 41000
1. What is the independent variable in this scenario?
2. What is the dependent variable in this scenario?
3. How would you describe the research design in this scenario?
4. Assume Ms. A. Lee concluded there was no difference in salaries between colleges (Walton or Non-Walton), how many conditions to infer causation have been met?

Answer 1

1. college

2, salary

3. true experiment

4. 2

Explanation:

1. in this scenario the independent variable is the college. that is either walton college or non walton.

2. the dependent variable is the variable of interest. And this is salary. Students want to know what to major in that can give them a lot of salary when they start working.

3. This is a true experiment due to the random sample assigned.

4. 2 conditions to infer causation have been met.