Professor Y wants to determine if people who sit in the front or the back of her class earn higher grades. At the beginning of the semester, she recruits students who all have the same GPA and who are all taking the same class. At the end of the semester, she compares the final grades of:

1. Students who sat in the back of the class.
2. Students who sat in the front of the class.

This design is a/an:

A. Statistical design
B. Matching design
C. Pre-post test design

Professor Y is employing a matching design in her study to control for previous academic performance by comparing students with the same GPA based on their seating position in the classroom hence, answer is 3) Matching design

The research design that Professor Y is using to determine if students who sit in the front or the back of the class earn higher grades is a matching design. This is because she has specifically recruited students who all have the same GPA to control for prior academic performance, and she then compares their final grades based on seating position within the same class. This method attempts to ensure that the only difference between the groups is their seating position, which is the independent variable, while controlling for their initial GPA as a confounding variable.

In a matching design, researchers often pretest participants or match them on certain variables to create groups that are similar except for the treatment variable. This is distinct from simply having independent or quasi-independent groups where participants are randomly assigned. The goal here is to control for variables that might affect the dependent variable before any treatment or intervention takes place.