Arizona State University might not have made it to the final 64 teams playing in the 2015 March Madness tournament, but they deserve a special spot in my blog because this story on ASU's "Curtain of Distraction" provides some great quasi-experimental data.
Like many college teams, ASU has a hard-core fan base devoted to distracting the opposing team during free throw attempts. As this related story discusses, some teams bring out huge photos of celebrities or players; other teams have guys who dress up in costume (sort of) and dance around. Starting with the 2013-14 season, ASU fans developed the Curtain of Distraction--a big black curtain. As a free throw shot begins, the curtain opens, displaying......well, it's a surprise every time! It might some kissing unicorns, some people dancing in tutus, or an Elvis impersonator.
Does the Curtain of Distraction work for ASU?
Below is a figure, adapted from data from sports-reference.com, showing the percentage of free throws missed by the opposing team during ASU's home games. The figure shows the three seasons before the Curtain of Distraction was introduced, and the two seasons afterwards:
a) What are the IV's and DV's in this figure?
b) What kind of quasi-experiment does the figure above best illustrate?
(your choices are: non-equivalent control group design, posttest only; non-equivalent control group design, prettest-posttest; interrupted time-series design, and non-equivalent control group time-series design).
c)Why does we need to use a quasi-experimental design to test how well ASU's Curtain of Distraction technique works?
The data above certainly look convincing, right? Opponents whiffed more free throws in seasons after the Curtain than before. But what confounds might there be? The story in the New York Times addressed some of these possible confounds.
For instance, the free-throw percentage of Arizona State’s opponents has not changed in their other away games, suggesting that the ability of the opponents didn’t change, just their performance when visiting Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe.
And conditions in the arena do not seem to have changed in a way that has made it harder for everyone to hit free throws — just the visiting team. Arizona State has maintained its pre-Curtain levels of accuracy, which makes sense given that the student cheering section puts away the Curtain when the home team is shooting.
Moreover, the accuracy of visiting teams when shooting from the floor has remained largely unchanged, which also makes sense, given that the Curtain appears only for free throws.
The text above should take care of some of the possible confounds to this result.
There's another figure presented in the NYT story, which you can access here (scroll to "Comparing Arizona State and Other Away Games"). This figure shows the relative free throw misses for each of ASU's opponents. It compares how often each of 26 opponents missed free throws at ASU, compared to at other away games. Of the 26 opponents, 21 of them shot worse at ASU than at other schools. This is a difference, on average, of 8.7%.
d) What kind of quasi-experiment does the figure "Comparing Arizona State and Other Away Games" best illustrate? (your choices are: non-equivalent control group design, posttest only; non-equivalent control group design, prettest-posttest; interrupted time-series design, and non-equivalent control group time-series design). For this question, there is no one best answer. You'll have to think about the best option from among these four. Consider what the main variables are, and whether the variables are between-subjects or within-subjects.
e). Finally, This related story suggests that ASU takes top rank for being the most successfully distracting team in NCAA Division I basketball. Its opponents hit 8.7% fewer free throws at ASU than at anywhere else. The next most successful school is Northwestern, with a gap of 6.6%, then Baylor, with 5.5%, and so on. What kind of quasi-experimental data does this set of ranks seem to represent?
Overall, are you convinced? Do you think the Curtain of Distraction works?