Question

A researcher is looking at the foot-in-the-door phenomenon (in which asking somebody to do a small task increases their willingness to do a larger task later) and door-in-the-face phenomenon (where asking for something big first results in people turning it down; they are then more likely to agree to something smaller out of guilt). He sets aside a week to collect data at FIU. From 9:00 am until 11:00 am each day, he carries out the foot-in-the-door session, where he asks people if they would be willing to donate a dollar to help fund an on-campus charity that helps underprivileged students with book fees. When they donate, he asks if they would be willing to attend an on-campus event the next week that will last about two hours. From 11:00 am until 1:00 pm each day. He carries out the control condition where he only asks them if they would be willing to attend the on-campus event. Finally, from 1:00 until 3:00 he first asks if they would be willing to donate $20. When they turn him down, he then asks if they would be willing to attend the event (door-in-the-face condition). He finds that those in both the foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face conditions are more willing to go to the two-hour event than those in the control condition. What is the confound?

Answer 1

Though there seems to be no confounding factor, one confounder that is possible here is the time at which the study is being conducted and this might be influencing the results obtained.

The researcher set fixed times for three groups:

1. From 9.00 am until 11.00 am for foot-in-the-door condition.

2. From 11:00 am until 1:00 pm for control condition.

3. From 1:00 pm until 3:00 pm for door-in-the-face condition.

These fixed times might be the reason for the conclusion drawn because people have different moods at different times of a day. So, the researcher must change the times frequently so that each condition is studied at all those three times.

Few days, he must take study only on 1^st condition and other days - only 2^nd condition and then only 3^rd condition. And again for other few days, all three conditions at different times of a day as given in the question but day by day changing them without fixing that this time is for studying this condition only. By doing this, the researcher can put check to the confounding effect of the time so that the results obtained from the research are relatively more reliable.