The folder sesame contains data from an experiment in which a randomly selected group of children was encouraged to watch the television program Sesame Street and the randomly selected control group was not.
(a) The goal of the experiment was to estimate the effect on child cognitive development of watching more Sesame Street. In the experiment, encouragement but not actual watching was randomized. Briefly explain why you think this was done. (Hint: think of practical as well as statistical reasons.)
(b) Suppose that the investigators instead had decided to test the effectiveness of the program simply by examining how test scores changed from before the intervention to after. What assumption would be required for this to be an appropriate causal inference? Use data on just the control group from this study to examine how realistic this assumption would have been.
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