Fix It Kristen Is Approaching Her 30^th Birthday and Is Worried Because

Essay

Fix It
Kristen is approaching her 30^th birthday and is worried because she is still single. She's tried to meet men at bars, the gym, and through several online dating sites all with no luck. Her friend, Beth, is a graduate student pursuing a degree in sexology. Beth recently read an article in Cosmopolitan that reported men find women who wear high-heeled shoes more attractive than those who wear flats and that the height of one's shoe was related to whether a man would approach a woman. Beth decides to test whether there is credence to the idea that shoe height is related to attraction and uses Kristen as her guinea pig. She thinks Kristen is the perfect person to study since she often wears shoes with three different heel heights during a single day. She wears flats while at the gym in the morning, 1.5 inch heels at work during the day, and 3-inch heels in the club at night. One day when Kristen is wearing the three types of shoes Beth records how men behave toward her. Each man who approaches Kristen receives a score on a 100-point scale, with higher scores reflecting more attraction. The next day Beth analyzes the data. She finds that three men approached Kristen at the gym and the mean attraction score was 15. Only one man approached Kristen at work and his attraction score was five. Twenty-two men approached Kristen at the club and the mean attraction score was 68. Beth performed independent t-tests to determine whether the attraction scores differed between the treatments. The results confirmed that men were significantly more attracted to Kristen when she wore very high heels. Kristen concludes that the article about attraction and heel height in Cosmopolitan is scientifically credible. She decides to renew her subscription for three more years.
Beth developed her research project based on a Cosmopolitan article. What do you think of that? What concerns and limitations do you see with Beth's study? Fix it.