Researchers in the Netherlands examined whether a variety of characteristics of New York City vacation rental listings, including the attractiveness of the hosts, predicted the price of that listing (Jaeger, Sleegers, Evans, Stel, & van Beest, 2018). The researchers recruited participants from MTurk and asked them to rate the photos of 1020 people, without knowing that these individuals were Airbnb hosts, on a scale of 0–11. Photos were rated by an average of 26 participants, and the researchers took the median score for each photo and used that as the attractiveness score of the host. They used the prices for a given day for all Airbnb apartments.

a. For this example, state the variables, identify what type of variable each is, indicate which is the independent variable and which is the dependent variable, and note the appropriate statistical test. Explain why you suggested that test.

b. What are the pros and cons of using a sample of participants from a crowdsourcing platform like MTurk?

c. Toward the beginning of their Methods section, the researchers reported: “This study was pre-registered and all data and analysis scripts are available at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/3enh8/). We report how our sample size was determined, all data exclusions, and all measures in the study.” Explain what that means, what you might find at the link, and why these are ethical data practices.

d. The researchers reported: “we did find a positive effect of host attractiveness,

 

95% CI [0.0018, 0.021]…. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in perceived attractiveness was associated with a 2.78% price increase” (p. 4). In your own words, describe what the researchers found. Refer to the statistics in your answer.

e. The analysis in part (d) was actually part of a larger analysis, a multiple regression. Explain why the researchers likely used multiple regression as an analytical technique.

f. In their discussion, the researchers point out that their work is correlational in nature, rather than experimental, “which precludes us from making any causal claims” (p. 8, 2018). In your own words, what does this mean? What else may cause attractiveness to predict price?

Transcribed Image Text:

B= 0.011 SE = 0.0048 t(1, 010)= 2.34 p= .020- %3D