Archival Data

Read the following research description and answer the questions that follow.

Description:

A researcher believes that college students are not as romantic as they used to be. Specifically, he believes that students who attended college in the 1950s were much more romantic than students are currently. To test his hypothesis, he examines the frequency of personal ads placed in several college newspapers on Valentine's Day. From the college archives, he samples the appropriate issues of the college papers covering the period from 1950 to the present. He finds that the number of personal ads placed in the newspapers has declined dramatically.

1		What major concept in this study must be given clear operational meaning prior to collecting data?
2		Which seems more likely as a possible source of bias in this study: selective survival or selective deposit? Explain your answer.
3		Identify an important variable not controlled in this study that could produce an alternative explanation for the relationship between the year of newspaper publication and the frequency of personal ads.