1. If you wanted to study the effects of diet on colon cancer among Hispanic American women, would you use a retrospective or prospective design? What are the benefits of this design that you have chosen? Describe your recruitment strategy (in other words, where would you get your participants and how would you motivate them to complete your questionnaires?) What are you independent and dependent variables? What are some problems that you would need to take into account?
2. A recent study by Eisenberg and colleagues (2004) reported that adolescents who frequently have dinner with their families reported lower levels of smoking, drinking, drug use, and depressive thoughts. What type of research design do you think they used (experiment, randomized clinical trial, correlation)? What are some other possible explanations for these positive outcomes other than eating dinner together?