Researchers wanted to investigate the effectiveness of a new immersive virtual-reality (VR) exposure therapy programme on the symptoms of patients with severe arachnophobia (fear of spiders).
Before starting the programme, participants were placed in a controlled testing room containing a harmless house spider inside a sealed glass terrarium. After completing a six-week course of the VR exposure therapy, the participants returned to the same testing room for a post-therapy assessment.
The researchers recorded two metrics during both the pre-therapy and post-therapy assessments:
Explain one strength and one weakness of using quantitative data in this phobia therapy study.
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