Question: A waste management company is interested in knowing whether the proportion of households participating in a recycling program is affected by the frequency of material pickups. They devise a simple experiment. In one neighborhood, residents were invited to participate in a weekly pickup service over the subsequent six months, provided with recycling boxes and given reminder letters about the availability of the service and service details. In a second neighborhood, the same procedures were used but residents were informed that their service would be bi-weekly. In the last month of the experiment, operators determined the number of participants in the recycling program by counting the number of houses where they made pickups. The results are summarized in the following table:
a. Does the frequency of service matter?
b. If you were redesigning this study, what other data do you think it would have been useful to collect? What other changes would you make in the research design?