Business Research

This Professional Assignment (CLA1) requires a minimum of five (5) pages (excluding tables, graphs, appendices, title, and reference pages) APA formatted Word Document in response to the following questions. Your answers should be clear, well-organized, and specific. Provide a concise, cogent argument and include details to support your response.

Xavier has developed a lab experiment to test the hypotheses of his study. In lab experiments, control and manipulation are introduced to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables in an artificial setting.

1. Discuss the principles of control and manipulation.


2. Describe how Xavier manipulates the independent variable and the moderating variable in this study.


3. Although Xavier has pretested the manipulation of product involvement, he has also included a manipulation check for involvement in his study. Why would he have done that? 

You have just found out that the candy bar that features in the Seinfeld episode is very popular among women (92% of the consumers of this specific candy bar are women) but not among men. Hence, you suspect that gender is a nuisance factor in this study.

1. Based on the afore-mentioned research finding, please provide a detailed explanation of why and how “gender” might affect the results of the study if Xavier would not control for gender? 


2. Explain (in detail) three possible ways in which Xavier can control for gender in this study. 


3. Discuss the type of experimental design that Xavier is using.


4. Which factors affect the internal validity of Xavier’s study given the experimental design he is using? Please provide justification.


5. Are the findings of this study generalizable to other settings? In other words, how do you justify the external validity of this study?


6. Xavier has indicated that he wants to give the participants a cover story. What could be the purpose of this cover story?


7. Do you believe that telling a cover story is ethical or not?