Dr. Nguyen is a psychologist who studies legal decision making. Specifically, he is curious about the factors that are irrelevant to the crime committed that influence the sentences juries give to defendants (known as extra-legal factors). To study this further, he samples a group of jury-eligible adults from the Memphis area. He provides them with the fact pattern to a particular case and allows them to watch the closing statements from the trial. He then asks them to provide a sentence (in months) for the defendant. In addition, he measures two legal factors (the number of arguments made by the prosecuting attorney and the length of time the defense attorney speaks during his or her closing argument) and two extra-legal factors (how attractive the participants think the defendant is [higher scores indicate higher ratings of attractiveness) and how many legal television shows the participants watch). The data are below. DV: Length of Sentence Provided b Significance Variable (beta) .49 12 Number of arguments made by the prosecuting attorney 1.63 .02 Length of the defense attorney's closing argument Attractiveness of the -2.54 .04 defendant -.19 39 Number of legal television shows watched
Answer the following questions.
1. List the predictor and dependent/criterion variables in Dr. Nguyen's study.
2. Explain whether Dr. Nguyen is correct in thinking that extra-legal factors are more important in legal decision making than legal factors.
3. Choose one of the variables in Dr. Nguyen's study. Explain how this variable relates to criminal sentencing, considering direction of the effect, statistical significance, and strength of relationship compared with the other variables.
4. Explain whether Dr. Nguyen could conduct an experiment instead of a multiple regression design. Regardless, why would an experiment be better than his current study?