To Drink or Not To Drink?

The topic we are exploring is energy drinks such as Monster and Red Bull. We
DATA choose this topic because they are relatively popular drinks and we wanted to find
COLLECTION out how response bias would affect its prevalence. The type of response bias we
are exploring is “Do the characteristics of the interviewer create response bias?”.
For this experiment, we will be asking
for permission at school and at our Our hypothesis is that when the interviewer is holding an energy drink, there will
workplace to ask subjects whether they be an increase in a “yes” response to the question “Do you drink energy drinks?”
regularly drink energy drinks. We will
be asking a total of 50 subjects, where compared to the responses if the interviewer was holding nothing.
25 initial subjects will be asked “Do
you regularly drink energy drink?” to
get the base response of “yes” or “no”.
To create response bias, the 25
remaining subjects will be asked the
same question in a comparable manner
with the exception that the interviewer
will be holding a caffeinated energy
drink in their hand when asking the
question. We will incorporate element
of random assignment by randomly
choosing 25 students at the school for
each treatment. We will create a control
group by only asking half the subjects
or a total of 25 the regular question. For
this project to be completely random, it
would be a mixture of asking random
students (9th- 12th), male or female. To
avoid confounding variables, we will
walk up to random students and ask
them the question in in a similar
manner for each treatment.

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Summary Statistics and Conclusion
Based on the graphs, the data of the responses when the interviewer was holding an energy drink was 44% for the “yes”
response and 56% for the “no” response. The data of the responses when the interviewer was not holding any drinks was 64% for the “yes”
response and 36% for the “no” response.

In summation, our hypothesis was incorrect because after the experiment was conducted it could be seen that there was an
increase in the “yes” response when the interviewer was not holding an energy drink. The answer to the question “Do the characteristics of
the interviewer create response bias?” is yes because although our hypothesis was incorrect, a notable difference can be seen in the responses
because of the different treatments. What we can conclude from this is that the characteristics of the interviewer do affect the subject
responses given. Things that we could have done better in this project are keeping the subject pool more consistent and collecting more
responses. The graphs that were used would have appeared better if they were done electronically, however there was trouble finding a
website that accurately depicted our information.