Which of these is an example of randomly assigning participants to conditions in a study?
A) Susie places the first six people to show up for her study in the experimental group and the next six people in the control group.
B) Every time a participant shows up for his study, Mark flips a coin to determine which condition to put the participant in.He predetermined that heads is the control group and tails is the experimental group.
C) Clarice has identified her population of interest as all students attending the local county high school.She then proceeds to randomly choose high school students for her study by having a random number generator generate possible high school ID numbers.
D) Devon gives his problem-solving task to a group of first graders in the classroom for which he is a student teacher.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

B is an example of randomly assigning participants to conditions in a study because the decision to place the participant in the control or experimental group is based on chance (coin toss). A is not random because Susie is using order of arrival to determine group assignment. C is random in the sense that a random number generator is being used, but it is not specific to the participants in the study, meaning that the numbers generated may not correspond to actual students. D is not random because the participants are not being assigned to conditions in a randomized way.

Which of These Is an Example of Randomly Assigning Participants