In the Sommers and Ellsworth (2001) experiment on the effects of race on a trial verdict, explain how the interaction provided important information. Were the independent variables qualitative or quantitative? the dependent variables?
What will be an ideal response?
In the Sommers and Ellison experiment, there was no difference in sentencing for black defendants when a mock trial involved a specific statement about racial issues. On the other hand, when race was not mentioned, black defendants received longer sentences than white defendants. If there had been only one variable, the investigators would not have seen the complex pattern of results.
That is, if the researchers had only compared sentences of black and white defendants in race-salient trials, they would have concluded that race was unimportant on sentence length. If the researchers had only compared sentences of black and white defendants in non-race-salient trials, they would have concluded that race did make a difference. The truth is more complex: race sometimes makes a difference, but sometimes it doesn't. You need a factorial design to see this complexity.
You might also like to view...
Discuss areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court conservatives have parted from the conservative movement in the recent past.
What will be an ideal response?
Early TV network news programs focused their evening news programs on _____ as a way to inspire trust in viewers
A) an "anchorman" B) ?foreign reporting C) "sex and death" D) ?infotainment E) ?soft news
The role of citizens is limited to choosing among competing leaders in the ______ theory of democracy.
a. pluralist b. elite c. participatory d. economic e. hierarchical
When using gamma to measure the substantive significance, equal proportions in the cells for each row indicate that:
a. there is a negative relationship b. there is a positive relationship c. the null hypothesis cannot be rejected d. the null hypothesis can be rejected