In order to determine the effect companion animals might have on the moods of elderly people living alone experimenters created six groups from a large population of single people over 70 years old. They had three groups: those without pets, those who owned a dog, and those who owned a cat. They randomly selected 50 men from each of those groups and 50 women from each of those groups for a total of 300 participants. Which of the following statements about this study is correct?

a. This study is an experiment, since it was based on a random sample.
b. This study is an observational study, since researchers did not assign the subjects to a gender or pet ownership status.
c. This study is an experiment, since each subject was classified into one of the six possible combinations of pet ownership and gender.
d. This study is a combination of both an experiment and an observational study.

Option d.

Step-by-step explanation:

Thinking process:

There two things in the question:

1. experimental set up

2. observation (a) the results, and (b) the behavior of the old people who own pets.

There is data on the experimental set up. It means that correlations cane be done to determine the significance of the results.

On the other side, the results will present more or less the common trends in  the adult population who own pets. In this case, the data is representative of the total population.

a) 15/7

step-by-step explanation:

introduction, methodology, results, discussion

step-by-step explanation:

an observational study is one which consists of actual observation to record data and then analyse the data.

there are a number of factors that should be analyzed before starting an observational study.

the main four factors are:

i) introduction:   this should be analysed to check whether the purpose of the study is correctly established and the data recorded are appropriate for the study

methodology:   the method of collecting the data, such as whether randomly selected, and whether sample size matches with the population to be studied, whether questions asked are easy to answer by common men, etc.

results: then results such as summary of data with comments should be studied thoroughly

discussion:   the last is the discussion, this can be either by management people or persons who are all interested , etc.