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A research team wants to study how peer pressure affects adolescents' food choices. To maximize external validity, they decide to conduct their observations during lunchtime in a high school cafeteria instead of using a simulated laboratory dining room. Describe how applying the concept of a field study to this setting helps the researchers achieve their goal.
Question: A research team wants to study how peer pressure affects adolescents' food choices. To maximize external validity, they decide to conduct their observations during lunchtime in a high school cafeteria instead of using a simulated laboratory dining room. Describe how applying the concept of a field study to this setting helps the researchers achieve their goal.
Sample answer: By choosing a high school cafeteria, the researchers are conducting a field study in a real-world, natural environment rather than an artificial laboratory. This natural setting increases the study's external validity, allowing the researchers to generalize their findings about adolescent food choices directly to the real world.
Key points:
- The high school cafeteria represents a real-world, natural environment rather than an artificial laboratory.
- Conducting the research in this setting makes it a field study.
- This natural setting increases external validity, allowing the findings to be generalized to the real world.
Rubric: The response should identify the high school cafeteria as a real-world, natural environment and apply the definition of a field study to it. It must explain that using this natural environment instead of an artificial laboratory increases external validity, which allows the researchers to generalize their findings to the real world.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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Field Experiment
External Validity
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A research team wants to study how peer pressure affects adolescents' food choices. To maximize external validity, they decide to conduct their observations during lunchtime in a high school cafeteria instead of using a simulated laboratory dining room. Describe how applying the concept of a field study to this setting helps the researchers achieve their goal.