Step 5: Formulate Conclusions
(l) Under the assumption that people choose equally between the two names, are your class results (or something more extreme) unusual or reasonably likely to have occurred by random chance alone? Explain, citing the p-value that you approximated in the applet. (Is the p-value a large or small probability?)
(m) So if you were publishing these results in a research article, would you say these data provide convincing evidence that the probability a college student puts Tim on the left is larger than 0.5? Or do you think our results were just a fluke? Explain your reasoning.
(n) Are you willing to generalize this conclusion to a larger population as well (e.g., all students at your school? All college students? All Americans)? What population do you think your class is representative of with respect to this research conjecture? (Hint: This question is a bit of a judgement call.)
Step 6: Look Back and Ahead
Now we want to critique our study a bit: Step back and reflect on what you learned in this study and what could be improved upon.
(o) For example, does our evidence for this research conjecture (most students put Tim on left) adequately address the research question (facial prototyping)?
(p) If you were to repeat a study similar to this one, what changes would you recommend in how the data were collected or what new aspects to the question would you want to investigate?
