Question

question 4
read the following scenario and answer the question(s) below.
pablo and johanna have to do a yearlong study for their biology course. after some discussion, they decide to try comparing their dogs and the diet that they feed them to test their hypothesis that the local veterinarians special dog food mix will enhance growth and development. each student adopts a puppy from the local pound. pablo plans to feed his goldendoodle the special diet, while johanna plans to use generic dry kibble from the supermarket for her bulldog.
after meeting with their instructor, pablo and johanna know that they need to change their experimental design. they contact a local puppy farm and arrange to do their study with 3 - month - old litters of pups from four irish setters, for a total of 24 puppies consisting of 12 females and 12 males. in order to have two groups of puppies (control and experimental), pablo and johanna should _____.
randomly choose one dog for the control group and use the other 23 in the experimental group
put six males and six females in each group, with some from each litter in each group
flip a coin for each dog to see which group it will be in
put all the puppies from two of the litters in one group and all of the puppies from the other two litters in the other group
put the 12 females in one group and the 12 males in the other group

Explanation:

In a well - designed biological experiment, to ensure that the control and experimental groups are comparable and that variables other than the diet (the independent variable) are evenly distributed, random assignment is crucial. Flipping a coin for each dog to decide its group assignment is a form of randomization that helps to control for confounding variables such as genetic differences between litters, sex differences, etc. The other options do not properly randomize or may introduce biases (e.g., separating by litter, sex only).

Answer:

flip a coin for each dog to see which group it will be in