Answer:
1.
a. The students' percentage of new unrelated words that were mistakenly thought to be on the original list.
b. The students' self-assessment of their memory skills.
2.
b. The 750 first-year students at the college
Explanation:
Considering that the purpose of the study, the variables in this investigation are the students´ self-assessment of their memory skills (which expresses their confidence) and the percentage of mistaken words (which defines their memory quality). The final goal is to determine whether or not there´s a relationship between those variables.
In research, the population refers to a defined group of individuals or things that share similar features, and are all part of the group to whom the study intends to generalize its results. In this example: the 750 students. The 75 students who participate in your study are the population sample.