Thought Questions (Think about briefly, discuss with partner, and then move on)
The above descriptive analysis tells us what we have learned about the 30 subjects in the study. But can we make any inferences beyond what happened in this study?
- Does the higher improvement rate in the dolphin group provide convincing evidence that the dolphin therapy is genuinely more effective?
- Is it possible that there is no difference between the two treatments and that the difference observed here could have arisen just from the random nature of putting the 30 subjects into groups (i.e., the luck of the draw) and not quite getting equivalent groups?
- We can’t expect the random assignment to always create perfectly equal groups, but is it reasonable to believe the random assignment alone could have lead to this large of a difference?
