A researcher is interested in the social behavior of mice. He hypothesizes that mice from Strain A will be more social than mice from Strain B, and Strain B will be significantly more social than mice from Strain C. Mice from each of the three different strains (20 mice in each strain) are raised in a laboratory. The mice are group housed with members of its own strain. All the mice receive the exact same amount of food, water, and light over the first 10 weeks of life. At 11 weeks of age, each mouse is placed in a cage with a novel mouse from his own strain. The mouse's investigatory behavior toward the other mouse is timed for 10 minutes.
If the experimenter does decide to run this experiment again, what might the experimenter do to improve the chances of finding meaningful results?
A) double the number of mice in the isolated condition
B) use an analysis of variance instead of a t test
C) calculate an r-family measure of effect size
D) calculate the power given the anticipated means and standard deviations

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

By calculating the power given the anticipated means and standard deviations, the researcher can determine the necessary sample size to detect significant differences between the groups with a desired level of statistical power. A larger sample size would increase the chances of finding meaningful results. Using an analysis of variance instead of a t-test would be appropriate in this scenario with multiple groups, but it would not necessarily improve the chances of finding significant results. A correlation-based effect size measure like r-family would not be appropriate in this scenario.

A Researcher Is Interested in the Social Behavior of Mice