Dr. Amalie
Dr. Amalie is a social psychologist who is interested in the effects of group size on efficiency and on the satisfaction of individual group members. In a study conducted by Dr. Amalie's research team, three different group sizes were used. Large groups had 20 people, medium groups had ten people, and small groups had four people. There were ten sessions run with each type of group, and each group contained different individuals, so the total number of groups was 30 and the total number of participants was 340. All participants were students at the school where Dr. Amalie works. The groups were told that they needed to come to agreement about which movie to select for an upcoming student movie night. The time that it took each group to come to a decision was recorded. Afterward, each subject was asked to rate his or her satisfaction with the group's decision (on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is totally satisfied).
The results were as follows:
Mean time required to come to an agreement (all differences are statistically significant):
Large groups: 20.7 minutes
Medium groups: 16.4 minutes
Small groups: 10.3 minutes
Mean satisfaction rating for individuals (all differences are statistically significant):
In large groups: 4.6
In medium groups: 7.5
In small groups: 8.8
What is the independent variable in this study?
◦
satisfaction of individual group members◦
efficiency, as measured by speed of decision making◦
group size◦
comparing multiple groups
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