Psychology Question!

Question

A researcher hypothesizes that acupuncture, an ancient Chinese medical practice that involves inserting thin needles in specific places on the body, can allow stressed-out psychology students to decrease their level of anxiety. She randomly assigns half of her participants to undergo acupuncture and half to receive no treatment. Two months later, she measures their levels of anxiety and finds that people who received acupuncture are less stressed out than other participants who received no treatment. Provide a thorough response to the following questions.
1. What type of research design is this research using and why?
2. Describe the difference between an independent and a dependent variable and identify these variables in the described study.
3. Confounding variables are extraneous variables that influence the results. Is there a confound in this design? If so, what is it and why is it a confound?
4. Can we infer cause and effect from this study? Why or why not?

Answer 1

1) it is the treatment-control experiment;  half of the participants receive the treatment (the acupuncture)

    and the other half do not.

 

(2)  the dependent variable shall be the stress level. The idea is that the stress level

       is dependent upon (affected by) the acupuncture , which is the independent variable

 

(3) Participants can participate in other stress-relieving activities or behaviors such as exercise

      program which affect the results. That is other unknown factors can reduce the stress level

     besides the acupuncture

 

(4)