Ever notice that some college students buy all the books for class, complete all the readings, do all the homework, and so on? These students usually end up with better grades as well. An education professor decided to investigate if these more conscientious students received better grades because they worked harder or because they were innately smarter. The professor got (a) a group of conscientious students from a number of different colleges and (b) a group of non-conscientious students from the same colleges, and compared the two groups in terms of a standardized IQ test.

a. Generate a sentence that states the question the researcher is trying to answer.
b. List the variables and label them as independent and dependent.
c. Determine what type of study is being done: correlational, experimental, or quasi-experimental.
d. If the study is correlational or quasi-experimental, come up with a plausible confounding variable and explain how it affects both variables.