Below is a summary of a recent study. Read the summary and then identify at least three FLAWS with the design and methods used.

Aggression is a behavioral response that many people show on a regular basis. People yell, shout, push and fight. Often times, people perceive that men are more aggressive than women, perhaps because this is what is portrayed most often in the media.

Knowing that both men and women are capable of having aggressive tendencies, Dr. Maye, a member of a research institution which focuses on aggression, wanted to find out if one gender is really more aggressive than the other.

To conduct his experiment, he placed an ad in a newspaper and asked for volunteers to participate in a study that was going to explore gender differences in aggression. All interested people were asked to report to the institution conducting the research.

Thirty men and thirty women volunteered to participate in the study. When they arrived at the study, they were exposed to multiple situations that were supposed to elicit aggression (an accomplice posing as a participant was used to provoke the actual participants by gently pushing them away while saying something rude). After they were put in this situation, the participants were given the opportunity to write messages to the person who provoked them.

The messages that participants wrote were coded by two independent researchers who were not aware of the participant's gender. The messages were coded on a 7-point scale for the degree of verbal aggressiveness that was used. The results showed that women provided more aggressive messages than men.

In a follow-up study, the researchers found the same resultswomen were found to be more verbally aggressive than men. The researchers used these results to draw the conclusion that, contrary to popular belief, women are actually more aggressive than men.