A researcher believes that couples that live together before marriage experience happier and more stable marriages than couples who do not and plans to conduct a research investigation to test this idea. which research purpose is this an example of?

This type of quantitative research aims to examine the effects of a treatment dicotomic variable (values 0 or 1) on a certain dependent variable. In this case:

the treatment variable: living together with the couple before marriage. It is dicotomic because it equals 1 when a couple lived together and 0 when one did not. the dependent variable: happiness during the marriage

The aim will be to assess whether there is or not a casual relationship among these two variables. In order to so, control and treatment groups should be observed. The treatment group would contain couples who experienced the treatment, hence (living together before marriage), while the control group would be composed by couples who did not undertake the treatment.

A researcher believes that couples that live together before marriage experience happier and more stable marriages than couples who do not and plans to conduct a research investigation to test this idea. This research purpose is an example of a quantitative research.