In an experiment, Casimer assigned all males to a group in which participants drank three glasses of fruit punch. All females were assigned to a group in which participants drank three glasses of wine. Casimer found that the participants who drank the wine made more errors on a simulated driving test than did the participants who drank the punch. An obvious problem with this experiment is that:

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The question describes an experiment where all males drank three glasses of fruit punch and all females drank three glasses of wine, and the wine group performed worse on a driving test. This setup raises concerns about internal validity due to systematic differences between groups beyond the manipulated variable.
Option 1: 'participants were not randomly assigned to groups.' This is a plausible problem because gender was used as the basis for group assignment, not randomization. Without random assignment, preexisting differences between males and females (or other confounds) could account for the observed effect rather than the beverage consumed.
Option 2: 'there was no experimental group.' This is incorrect. There are two groups being compared: punch group and wine group, which constitute the experimental and comparison conditions.
Option 3: 'there was an independent variable but not a dependent variable.' This is inaccurate. The beverage type (wine vs punch) is the independent variable, and the driving test performance is the dependent variable; both are present in the design.
Option 4: 'participants were not randomly assigned to groups.' This repeats the same concern as Option 1 and is the core flaw here: the nonrandom assignment by gender creates confounds and threatens causal inference. The repeated wording reinforces the identified issue rather than introducing a new flaw.

Introduction to Psychology Exam #1 (1-3) - PSYC 1A - Friday, 3/28

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A research involved sending out obtaining information from students using a survey If a representative sample has been established, randomly assigning participants to groups rather than using pre-determined selection factors (such as degree type, gender, or age) will increase the internal validity.

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