Question: Levels of groups' certainties about their eyewitness testimony to a simulated crime were compared.
Levels of groups' certainties about their eyewitness testimony to a simulated crime were compared. The first group was set up to be "right" in its eyewitness accounts and the second group was set up to be "wrong"; the desire was to see if confidence differed across groups. Thirty-four participants were recruited from a college campus and randomly divided into two groups, both of which were shown a video of a crime scenario (length: 58 seconds) in which the perpetrator's facial characteristics (with respect to the camera) were clearly visible at two separate points and sporadically visible at others. Half the participants then were shown a five-individual lineup that contained the perpetrator in the video ("Group A"), and half the participants were shown a five-individual lineup that did not contain the perpetrator ("Group B"). Participants were asked to (a) identify if and where the perpetrator was in the lineup and (b) provide a rating of confidence on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being highly confident) that the selection was the same as the person seen in the video committing the crime. All participants signed consent forms, were told they could leave the study at any time, and were told they would be debriefed. Data on the confidence ratings are shown below.
Group A Confidence Group B Confidence
10 08
07 10
10 05
09 05
10 10
08 07
05 06
10 10
10 09
01 03
10 06
05 04
06 10
07 10
06 10
04 03
05 07
Data Analysis
A. Identify the sample size and explain how it will inform your analysis. In other words, what is the sample size? How will the size of the sample inform your analysis?