Practice question · Multiple choice
A cross-sectional study finds 70-year-olds score lower on reasoning than 30-year-olds. Why does the Flynn effect make this comparison nearly impossible to interpret?
Hints
- The two groups were born forty years apart. Ask what else changed in forty years.
- Three points a decade, four decades. Do the arithmetic before attributing anything to age.
Show the answer
D. Because scores rose about three points a decade
Why
Age and birth cohort are perfectly confounded, and the Flynn effect puts a number on the confound: roughly twelve points of the gap is generational before ageing contributes anything. Cross-sectional designs therefore overstate cognitive decline systematically, which is why longitudinal and sequential designs exist.
Practise Advanced Methodologies
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