Question 3.71

3.71 Temperature and work performance.

An expert on worker performance is interested in the effect of room temperature on the performance of tasks requiring manual dexterity. She chooses temperatures of 20°C (68°F) and 30°C (86°F) as treatments. The response variable is the number of correct insertions, during a 30-minute period, in a peg-and-hole apparatus that requires the use of both hands simultaneously. Each subject is trained on the apparatus and is then asked to make as many insertions as possible in 30 minutes of continuous effort.

  1. Outline a completely randomized design to compare dexterity at 20°C and 30°C. Twenty subjects are available.
  2. Because people differ greatly in dexterity, the wide variation in individual scores may hide the systematic effect of temperature unless there are many subjects in each group. Describe in detail the design of a matched pairs experiment in which each subject serves as his or her own control.

3.71

(b) Each worker performs the task twice, once at each temperature, for 30 minutes, and the number of insertions is recorded. The order of temperature assigned is randomized so that half of the workers first perform it at 20°C then 30°C, and the other half are reversed. The difference in number of insertions between the two temperatures is the response.