SAT OwlQuestion bank / Evaluating statistical claims: observational studies and experiments
Researchers recorded the daily screen time and nightly hours of sleep for randomly selected teenagers, without asking them to change their behavior in any way. What type of study is this?
An observational study
A randomized experiment
A census of all teenagers
A controlled experiment with a placebo group
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A
In an observational study, researchers measure variables without assigning treatments. Here, the teenagers chose their own screen time and sleep, and the researchers only recorded them. No treatment was imposed, so it is not an experiment.
Choice B is tempting because the teenagers were randomly selected, but random selection is different from randomly assigning a treatment.
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