In a study published in the July 4, 2007, issue of the Journal of the American M

Question

In a study published in the July 4, 2007, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers investigated whether small doses of dark chocolate can reduce blood pressure for people who suffer from mild cases of high blood pressure. They recruited 64 German adults who were otherwise healthy except for mild cases of high blood pressure. These subjects were randomly assigned to either a dark chocolate group or a white chocolate group, and all subjects were instructed to eat one square portion of a chocolate bar (containing about 30 calories) every day for 18 weeks. They were also instructed not to eat any other cocoa products. Each subject had his/her blood pressure recorded at the beginning and end of the study, with the reduction in blood pressure calculated. It turned out that those in the dark chocolate group had an average reduction of about 3 points in systolic blood pressure, compared to a 10 point reduction on average in the white chocolate group.

1. Identify the explanatory variable in this study, and classify it as categorical or quantitative.

2. Identify the response variable in this study, and classify it as categorical or quantitative.

3. Is this an experiment or an observational study? Explain how you know.

4. Does the design of the study (the way the data were collected) allow for concluding that eating dark chocolate causes a reduction in blood pressure? Explain briefly.

5. Does the design of the study (the way the data were collected) allow for generalizing the results to the population of all people who suffer from a mild case of high blood pressure? Explain briefly.

Explanation / Answer

1)

high blood pressure

quantitative

2)

doses of dark chocolate

quantitative

3)

experimental study

because you are experiment with the sample of people

4)

Yes, because the sample size is greater than 30

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