Question

jenny is a school district administrator and is interested in comparing the effectiveness of two teaching approaches for teaching high school math: activity - based learning and textbook presentation. to investigate, she identifies 105 high school students in the district who were taught math last year using only activity - based learning and 105 who were taught using only textbook presentation. she then refers to the schools databases and retrieves last years math final exam scores for these 210 students. jenny plans to compare the final exam scores between the two groups.
(a) first choose whether the procedure described above is an observational study or a designed experiment. then further categorize the procedure by choosing the correct type of observational study or designed experiment.
observationals tudy
designed experiment
retrospective
prospective
completely randomized
double - blind
(b) which one of the following best describes the explanatory (independent) and response (dependent) variables?
the explanatory variable is the final exam score and the response variable is the teaching approach.
the explanatory variable is the teaching approach and the response variable is the level of math course.
the explanatory variable is the level of math course and the response variable is the final exam score.
the explanatory variable is the teaching approach and the response variable is the final exam score.

Explanation:

(a) Jenny is comparing existing groups (students taught with activity-based vs. textbook-only methods) without manipulating variables, which is an observational study. Retrospective studies look at past data, which matches her retrieval of last year’s exam scores.
(b) The explanatory variable is the factor being tested (teaching approach), and the response variable is the outcome measured (final exam score).

Answer:

(a) Observational study, retrospective
(b) The explanatory variable is the teaching approach and the response variable is the final exam score.