One sample t-procedure or two sample t-procedure?

[Mr Davis 97]

Homework Statement

A university is interested in whether there's a difference between students who live on campus and students who live off campus with respect to absenteeism. Over one semester, researchers take random samples of on-campus and off- campus students and record the number of classes each student misses. State whether you'd use one-sample or two-sample procedures to analyze the data.

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

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I feel like either could work. On the one hand, you could just calculate the statistics for each group, off-campus and on-campus, and conduct a two sample t-procedure with that data. While on the other hand, you could pair one person with one from the other group based on similar characteristics such as GPA, course load, and extracurricular activities. I'm not sure which would be correct.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

While on the other hand, you could pair one person with one from the other group based on similar characteristics such as GPA, course load, and extracurricular activities. I'm not sure which would be correct.

The problem stated what data the researchers recorded. It wasn't given that they recorded information about GPA, course load etc.