'Does association imply causation? Extension to trinary choice' (AsPredicted #119,921)
Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 2 authors.
Pre-registered on 2023/01/26 06:33 (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? This is a continuation of a previous set of studies in which we asked whether the statement "X is associated with Y" implies that "X causes Y".
Previously, participants were given sentences of the general form "[X] is associated with [Y]", and a forced-choice binary response of whether this means that "[X] causes [Y]" or "[Y] causes [X]".
Such a binary response leaves open the possibility that neither option is very likely, and that participants believe neither X causes Y nor Y causes X, but rather that a third factor is driving the association.
We will present participants with a third alternative (that the two options are not related, but rather a third factor exists). We are primarily interested in the results regardless of hypothesis, but predict that the modal response will remain that people will report "X --> Y".
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. We will extend Study 2A of our previous asPredicted pre-registration, using the sentence construction 'X is associated with [higher/lower/--] [risk/probability/--] of Y', with the trinary choice 'X causes higher/lower/-- Y' vs. 'Y causes higher/lower/-- X', and 'A third factor is causally related to X and Y, they are not directly related'. X and Y will be nonsense words such as Denoglin and Fembik.
The dependent variable will be people's choice of the three options.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There will be one condition, with 7 sentences total: "X is associated with Y", "X is associated with an increased probability of Y", "X is associated with a decreased probability of Y", "X is associated with an increased risk of Y", "X is associated with a decreased risk of Y", "X is associated with a higher risk of Y", "X is associated with a lower risk of Y".
Each participant will see all questions.
Question order, answer order, and specific word order will be randomized.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We will compare the proportion of participants for the 3 choices (first item causes second item, second item causes first item, neither) to each other, using a two-sided z-test of proportions, meaning 3 comparisons when summing across the 7 different questions.
We will also compare the proportions relative to one another within each question (meaning, within each of the 7 questions, 3 comparisons). We will correct for multiple hypothesis testing using the Holm-Bonferroni method.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. We will exclude participants who fail to answer simple catch questions (e.g. answering 'describe what this study was about' with 'fine, thanks').
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. We will recruit 100 participants, in line with the sample size of the previous studies in this series.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) Nothing else to pre-register.
