Dr. Doodley thought that fast music enhanced people's work performance; she decided to run an experiment to test this idea. She chose two secretarial pools to study. One pool did legal typing, and the other did medical typing. (By the way, all of the secretaries in both offices happened to be women.) Dr. Doodley convinced the supervisor of each pool to let her play music in the office for a week. In one office, she played fast music every day. In the other office, she played slow music. (Unfortunately, the slow music was taped from an old record, so it did have a slight hiss.
However, the fast music was fine.) At the end of the week, Dr. Doodley convinced both supervisors to let her do all of the performance evaluations. She found that the first pool had an average performance rating of 90 points (out of 100 possible), while the second group averaged only 60 points (out of 100). Dr. Doodley found that the difference in scores between the two groups was statistically significant, so she concluded that fast music enhances people's work performance.
1. State the experimental hypothesis of this experiment, and label the independent and dependent variables. Which was the experimental group? Was an appropriate control group used? Why or why not?
2. Can you find anything wrong with Dr. Doodley's experiment or conclusion? List any problems you notice, and explain how they might have affected Dr. Doodley's results.
3. How could this experiment be improved?