In the context of the principles discussed in lecture for assessing a randomized controlled trial, a major problem with the study described above was that __________.
A researcher conducts a study to determine whether aromatherapy (having participants smell pleasant aromas for 20 minutes each day) is an effective treatment for generalized anxiety disorder. The researcher begins by recruiting a random set of 200 college students from a psychology class. The students are pretested to determine whether they actually like the aromas being used in the therapy. The 100 who rate the aromas as being most pleasant are assigned to receive the aromatherapy treatment, and the other 100 are assigned to a no-treatment control group. After three months, each participant fills out a questionnaire that provides a validated, standardized self-report measure of anxiety. The anxiety level from this questionnaire was then used as the outcome measure of the study. In a statistical analysis, the researcher found that anxiety scores were significantly lower in the aromatherapy group than in the control group. The researcher concluded that aromatherapy is an effective treatment for generalized anxiety disorder. After the data were analyzed, the aromatherapy treatment was given to the control group for ethical reasons.
In the context of the principles discussed in lecture for assessing a randomized controlled trial, a major problem with the study described above was that __________.
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