Observational Study

To test the effects of breakfast on grades I ask my students if they ate breakfast and then compare the breakfast eaters grades to the non-breakfast eaters. This is an example of:

• Observational study

• Experiment

A researcher stood at a school parking lot entrance to see if the color of a car is related to the driver not wearing a seatbelt.

• Observational Study

• Experiment

A professor finds that people who are obese have higher cholesterol levels than those who are not obese.

• Observational Study

• Experiment

You want to see if students who have a 4.0 grade point average study more than those who do not.

• experiment

• observational study

Which scenario is best described as an observational study?

• For a class project, students in Health class ask every 10^th student entering the school if they eat breakfast in the morning

• A social researcher wants to learn whether or not there is a link between attendance and grades. She gathers data from 15 school districts

• A researcher wants to learn whether or not there is a link between children’s daily amount of physical activity and their overall energy level. During lunch at the local high school, she distributed a short questionnaire to students in the cafeteria

• Sixty seniors taking a course in Advanced Algebra Concepts are randomly divided into two classes. One class uses a graphing calculator all the time, and the other class never uses graphing calculators. A guidance counselor wants to determine whether there is a link between graphing calculator use and students’ final exam grades

You want to compare the health of students who walk to school to the health of students who ride the bus

• experiment

• observational study

Researchers wanted to know if there is a link between proximity to high-tension wires and the rate of leukemia in children. To conduct the study, researchers compared the rate of leukemia for children who lived within 1/2 mile of high-tension wires to the rate of leukemia for children who did not live within 1/2 mile of high-tension wires.

• Observational Study

• Experiment

Given the following scenario, state the sample. Ledo's Pizza wants to know the average number of toppings that a customer puts on their pizza. They decide to count the toppings of every 5th pizza ordered.

• All pizzas ordered

• Every 5th pizza

• Number of toppings

A researcher is interested in learning how people use the neighborhood park. The researcher goes to the park daily for a month and records how many people are on the playground, how many are on the basketball court, how many are at the picnic tables, and how many are at the skate park. What type of study is this?

• Observational

• Experiment

A survey is _____________

• an observational study

• an experiment