Because many students have started vaping in and around the school, Local High School has decided to introduce an education program to increase students' awareness of the dangers of vaping. Some of the staff and faculty members believe that this program is unnecessary and argue that the students are already aware of the risksthey just are choosing to vape anyway. The principal has asked you to conduct a study to determine 1) whether the students are knowledgeable about the risks of vaping and 2) whether students who participate in the education program will become more knowledgeable than their counterparts who do not participate in the program.

Knowledge about the risks of vaping will be determined by students' scores on a Vaping Knowledge instrument that has been used at other high schools and has been found to be both reliable and valid. You have been given permission to randomly assign students to either Group 1, students who will participate in an educational program on vaping, or Group 2, students who will participate in an educational program to promote good study habits. Clients in both groups will complete the Vaping Knowledge scale upon admission to their respective group programs and at the end of the educational program.

You find that, upon entry, students in the two groups show no significant differences in their characteristics of gender, race, age, and grade level. Both groups show very low levels of knowledge/awareness of the risks/dangers related to vaping.

1. Whatoperational definitionis given for thedependentvariable in the study?
2. What is a potentialethicalproblem with this study?

The design of the study looks like this:

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1. What type of design is being used in the study?
2. Which group in the described study is the experimental group (in the study, not just the design above)?

Suppose that the principal decides that students cannot be randomly assigned to two groups;everyonewill receive the vaping education program. The principal thinks that it will be enough to compare the pre-test and post-test knowledge levels ofone groupof students (i.e.,allof the students at Local High School) who receive the vaping educational program.

1. Draw the revised design.

5.Give anexampleof a potential threat to the internal validity (history, maturation, testing, instrumentation, selection, mortality, statistical regression) of this new design and explain why it should be of concernthat is, how it might affect interpretation of the results.