An experiment was done to look at whether there is an effect of the number of hours spent practising a musical instrument and gender on the level of musical ability. A sample of 30 (15 men and 15 women) participants who had never learnt to play a musical instrument before were recruited. Participants were randomly allocated to one of three groups that varied in the number of hours they would spend practising every day for 1 year (0 hours, 1 hours, 2 hours). Men and women were divided equally across groups. All participants had a one-hour lesson each week over the course of the year, after which their level of musical skill was measured on a 10-point scale ranging from 0 (you can’t play for toffee) to 10 (‘Are you Mozart reincarnated?’). An ANOVA was conducted on the data from the

Question

experiment. What can we say about the effect of practice on musical skill?





A. There was a significant effect of practice on skill level, which is likely to reflect the increase in musical skill when some weekly practice is engaged in compared to no hours practice.

B. There was a non-significant effect of practice on skill level, which implies that skill levels were similar regardless of how much practice per week was engaged in.

C. There was a significant effect of practice on skill level, which is likely to reflect a significant improvement when engaging in 1 hour per week practice compared to none, and when practising for 2 hours per week compared to 1.

D. There was a significant effect of practice on skill level, but this effect is superseded by the interaction between practice and gender.

Answer 1

Answer: A