A sociologist believes that physical distress in cities leads to social distress. She measures physical distress by seeing how much graffiti there is. Based on this, she classifies cities as being high, moderate, or low in terms of physical distress. She randomly samples cities in North America until she has 10 cities in each category. She then measures social distress by obtaining the teenage pregnancy rate for each of these cities.
a. What question is the researcher trying to answer?
b. List the variables and label them as independent and dependent.
c. Determine what type of study is being done: correlational, experimental, or quasi-experimental.

d. If the study is correlational or quasi-experimental, name a plausible confounding variable and explain how it affects both variables.