SOAN 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Central Limit Theorem, Design Of Experiments, Statistical Significance

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 2120
• Professor: D Walters

Document Summary

Experimental designs: when conducting an experiment, you want to see if the independent variable has an effect on the dependent variable (differences in outcomes between two groups) Average scores on the dependent variable and. Scores on all other variables which are likely to affect the dependent variable: equivalent, differences: manipulation, more complication designs. Even with ra (random assignment) of two or more groups, they will not be exactly equal in all. If the assignment is random, we can use tests of statistical significance (manipulation versus random respects (random individual variations) variation) (related to central limit theorem) As n (sample size) increases, individual differences decline (related to law of large numbers) Without random assignment, findings may be attributable to pre-existing differences between the groups (if people assign themselves to the groups, or you assign them to groups) Equivalent proceed as if random assignment had taken place.