Question: Computer-mediated communication study. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is a form of interaction that heavily involves technology (e.g., instant-messaging, e-mail). The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (April 2004) published a study to compare relational intimacy in people interacting via CMC to people meeting face-to-face (FTF). Participants were 48 undergraduate students, of which half were randomly assigned to the CMC group (communicating with the ‘‘chat'' mode of instant-messaging software) and half assigned to the FTF group (meeting in a conference room). Subjects within each group were randomly assigned to either a high equivocality (HE) or low equivocality (LE) task that required communication with their group members. In addition, the researchers counterbalanced gender, so that each group-task combination had an equal number of females and males; these subjects were then divided into male-male pairs, female-female pairs, and male-female pairs. Consequently, there were two pairs of subjects assigned to each of the 2 (groups) × 2 (tasks) × 3 (gender pairs) = 12 treatments. A layout of the design is shown below. The variable of interest, relational intimacy score, was measured (on a 7-point scale) for each subject pair.
(a) Write the complete model appropriate for the 2 × 2 × 3 factorial design.
(b) Give the sources of variation and associated degrees of freedom for an ANOVA table for this design.
(c) The researchers found no significant three-way interaction. Interpret this result practically
(d) The researchers found a significant two-way interaction between Group and Task. Interpret this result practically.
(e) The researchers found no significant main-effect or interactions for Gender pair. Interpret this result practically.