Spotting confounds is best done after you know what the researchers
concluded. _If_ the researcher were to claim that men, in general, are more
helpful, we'd have a task confound because the study used only one task -
helping with keys. Ideally, you'd want to utilize a variety of tasks in
different settings, and, you might see a task-by-gender interaction. On the
other hand, if the researcher merely claimed that men are more helpful in this
situation, tbe criticism disappears.
You could "randomly" assign subjects to male vs. female confederates - making
it an experimental variable. The other variable, gender of the subjects, is a
subject IV and not a true IV, cannot be manipulated, therefore causal
interpretations
--
* John W. Kulig, Department of Psychology ************************
* Plymouth State College Plymouth NH 03264 *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://oz.plymouth.edu/~kulig *
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* "Eat bread and salt and speak the truth" Russian proverb *
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