All Work Must Be Original, Cited, And Submitted To Tur

All Work Must Be Original Cited And Will Be Submitted To Turn It In

Referencing Internal Validity, please pick one of the studies listed below and (1) Briefly describe the threat in the context of the study description, (2) name the threat, and (3) explain how internal validity is threatened. Original Study: Tv ads promote online "brain games" and learning tools for adults and kids. A researcher decided to test the effectiveness of one of these games, ABCmouse. She gave kids aged 3-5 experience with either ABCmouse or an alternative game that wasn't educational (Pig Pile). After giving kids 2 weeks of experience playing their respective game, she tested their reading ability using the Burt Reading Test, which tests how many of 110 words a child can read. The words are graded in order of difficulty, so the more words children can read, the better their score. She was able to use students at a large, public preschool as participants. All the kids were aged 3 to 5.

Paper For Above instruction

The study examining the effectiveness of the educational game ABCmouse on children's reading abilities presents various opportunities for threats to internal validity. Internal validity refers to the extent to which a causal conclusion can be confidently drawn from a study, and it can be compromised by confounding variables, biases, or other factors that distort the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.

One prominent threat to internal validity in this study is selection bias. Since the researcher used students from a large, public preschool, it is possible that the children in this school share certain characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, prior exposure to educational activities, or baseline reading skills, which could influence the outcomes regardless of the game played. If children were not randomly assigned to the ABCmouse or Pig Pile groups, pre-existing differences could confound the results, making it difficult to attribute differences in reading scores solely to the use of the game.

Selection bias threatens internal validity because it introduces systematic differences between groups before the intervention begins. If children who played ABCmouse already had higher baseline reading abilities or other advantageous characteristics, improvements post-intervention could be incorrectly attributed to the game rather than their initial skill levels. This confounding factor undermines the causal inference that the game caused any observed improvements.

To mitigate this threat, the study would need to employ random assignment, ensuring each child has an equal chance of being placed in either group, thus balancing pre-existing differences. Alternatively, measuring baseline reading skills prior to the intervention could help control for initial disparities, allowing for more accurate assessments of the game's effectiveness. Without such measures, the internal validity of the study remains vulnerable to selection bias, which can distort the relationship between the exposure to the educational game and reading development.

In addition, other threats such as maturation effects or testing effects could influence the validity; for instance, children naturally improve in reading skills over time (maturation), or repeated testing could lead to familiarity with the Burt Reading Test (testing effects). Nonetheless, selection bias remains a primary concern due to the potential for pre-existing differences to confound causal conclusions.

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