--Original published at Phil's College Blog

Research Question: Does eating breakfast affect overall mood?

I chose this research question because I also noticed different moods in the morning at my high school. Personally, I have noticed my mood change when I do not have breakfast. My mother used to say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. I truly never understood why until I noticed that I acted differently with or without breakfast. However, my brother never ate breakfast in the morning, and he always had the same mood. With this study, I would like to figure out if this was true for people in the community and not just for me.

Hypothesis: If a person misses breakfast, then there is a decline in mood.

Procedure: To find the samples for the research, the researcher must send out a survey to  ask if people wanted to be included in the study. Once the results are returned, the participants that answered “Yes” are split in half into two groups. The groups will be randomly assigned to the either Group A or B.  Group A will not eat breakfast for an entire week and Group B will eat a breakfast consisted of bacon, eggs, and toast for the same week. The mood of the participants will be reported by colleagues at work and other students at the participants schools. After the first testing week, Group A and Group B will switch from eating breakfast to not eating breakfast. This will ensure that it was not the personalities of the subjects that effected the research.  The mood will be calculated by the participants reaction to social interaction. The colleagues and students will write down the participants reaction in a notebook. Once the research is complete, the researchers will determine the mood of the participants. By how many smiles and friendly reactions are given throughout the week.

--Original published at Grace's College Blog

The Myth Busters episode, “Do Hand’s Free Devices Promote Safer Driving?”, tests whether it is safer to drive while holding your phone to your ear with your hand or having it on your dashboard, hands-free. They tested first by the host driving both ways, talking while holding your phone and without holding. The test yielded similar scores. They then went to Stanford University to test 30 people using a driving simulator. They had 15 hold their phones to their ears and 15 were not holding their phone, but all were still talking on the phone. The end results were mostly failing because they drove the wrong way or they crashed and two people passed.

A strength of this test was that they showed how truly unsafe driving with your phone as a distraction is. Only 2 of the 30 participants passed the test with the simulator. Most of the participants failed to drive safely while being distracted by their phone.

A weakness of the test was that they chose two ways of unsafe driving to compare, rather than one unsafe way and driving normally without any phone distraction. They should have performed two different experiments, one comparing hands free driving to driving without distractions and one comparing holding your phone to driving without distractions.

They also failed to start with a hypothesis which is what all experiments should start with after you have gathered information about the topic. When testing the host of the show, they had some sort of point system, but failed to describe where the points came from or what affected them.

This was a flawed experiment, but adequately showed the dangers of distracted driving.

--Original published at Ariana's Blog

Do Men Really Find Blondes More Attractive?

I watched the episode Do Men Prefer Blondes?  In the episode the researchers were testing whether men are more attracted to blondes, when compared to brunettes and red-heads. They selected nine different women and had them each put on a wig in all three colors. Nine different men came in for each of the three trials and speed dated with the nine women. Then the men rated the women based on attractiveness and likability. The researchers concluded that hair color did not matter. 

One of the strengths of the study was that they had three trials to ensure the results were accurate. Multiple trials are important because having only one trial can create biased outcome, which can lead to inaccurate conclusions. They also had each girl change their hair color which eliminated biased opinions of the women. 

A weakness of this research is that there was no hypothesis. Without a hypothesis the audience did not know what was being tested. The hypothesis should have been a statement of what they thought the outcome of the experiment was going to be. If they believed that the men would find the blondes were more attractive the hypothesis could have been “Men prefer blonde women over brunettes and red-heads”.

Another weakness was that the researchers are testing two variables. They had the men rate the women on attractiveness and likeability which creates inaccurate results. Instead of men rating on a single quality they rated the women on two qualities. For this reason, the audience did not know which quality swayed the men’s overall rating of the women. Some men may have valued likeability over attractiveness. Each man had three minutes to talk with the girls, which would be enough time to judge personality, and additional features, such as facial characteristics, could influence their choices, not just hair color. Overall, there was no way for each individual to justify their specific rating. Overall, attraction goes beyond hair color. To isolate hair color, the men should have rated the women upon walking into the room. This would have eliminated personality and likeability factors.

--Original published at Olivia's College Blog

Myth busting videos are fun and entertaining. It’s easier to understand the experiment’s results if you take a look at its research methods. The topic I chose experimented on the assumption that women are superior at reading emotions over their male counterpart. The MythBusters took photos of themselves displaying emotions of sadness, anger, happiness, and confusion. They were cropped to show only their eyes. The experiment was designed with a small group of male and female participants who were asked to interpret the emotions displayed in 17 photos.

They recorded the data as participants guessed the emotions from the photos of the eyes. Their data showed that men had a 9.6/17 guessing accuracy, while woman had a 10.6/17 guessing accuracy. From this they concluded that women were in fact superior to men at reading emotions.

My first critique of their methods is the small participant pool. If there was a larger participant pool, the data would be more accurate because it would be more representative of the overall population. This contrasts with the MythBusters approach, because they used only a handful of participants to draw conclusions that supposedly apply to the entire male and female population.

Next, the MythBusters accepted the results of the experiment without replicating.  They could improve on this aspect of their experiment because their results were so close that they should have reattempted the experiment. Had they replicated several times and the women always came out on top, it would be more acceptable to make the claim that women are better.

One of the strengths of their experiment was how they interpreted their results. A notable difference that emerged from the experiment was the speed at which women recorded their responses; women were much quicker at deciding than men. It was a strength of their experiment to analyze and interpret their results for any patterns or red flags. Paying attention to research methods can be useful when trying to find credible studies.

--Original published at Victoria's Psych Blog

A research experiment I would conduct would be on mental health in middle school and high school students. I want to answer the question, “does a neglectful school administration correlate with mental illnesses in teenagers?” My hypothesis is “if an administration is neglectful of the conditions of their learning environment, then students are more likely to have a mental illness.” The definition of administration in my hypothesis is any discipline advisor, principal or counselor that can make a change in a student or school body environment. An example of a neglectful administration is being aware of an issue and choosing not to fix it, does not follow up with consequences written in a handbook, unaware of activities happening in the school and does not engage with students or staff. If an administration is neglectful, then they are fostering an unhealthy learning environment. Then, it would affect the mental health of students. For procedure, I would start with looking at the statistics of the school. For example, how many disciplinary actions, bullying reports, incident reports and communication between staff and administration. Then I would take mental health assessments on kids sixth through twelfth grade along with a survey on how safe and proud they are of the school. Then I would also send the survey to the parents of the students and teachers asking how they feel about the school environment. Comparing all of the results, I will compare what students, parents, teachers and administration says. If they say similar things, then the administration is not neglectful. If there are large gaps between what each group says, it is a neglectful environment. For example, the administrations say that there is no incidents of violence and students feel save in the environment, but parents and students report that majority of students feel unsafe at school, it is a neglectful environment. I will also look at the mental health status of students and compare it to how neglectful the administration is. I would make a scale for each section and survey that is filled out. It will all be averaged out, then compared. That would then be used as data for evidence of my hypothesis. �y@�

--Original published at Alex's Thoughts

My research scenario would be focused on how people’s literacy levels affect their memory. Does the amount that a person reads in their life affect how they perceive and remember the world around them? This particular question interests me, as I have noticed that people who tend to read more are often able to draw on the experiences depicted in the works they have read, even if they read the work very far in the past. The hypothesis that I would like to test would be that the more a person reads or has read, the better their memory should be, both short-term and long-term. As such, I would introduce a questionnaire to my participants with these questions.

1. How often would you say that you read in a week?
2. Give a rough estimate of the amount of books you have read in your life, and another estimate of the amount of articles you have read.
3. What genre of books tends to hold your attention the most?
4. Would you say that you are a forgetful person?
5. What is your age?
6. Would you describe yourself as a well-read person?
7. If you enjoy reading, why do you enjoy it?
8. What is your gender?

After the participants have filled out the questionnaire, I’d assign them a random candidate number to ensure their test results are paired with their questionnaires, while their actual identities remain anonymous. I’d have them play Simon Says, the simple memory game. I’d measure how far each candidate got in the game in terms of rounds. I’d allow each candidate five trials with Simon Says, then have them read a short story, no more than 10 pages. After that, I’d have them play five more trials of Simon Says. I’d then have them memorize the layout of a small fictional town, with a 3 minute time limit. This would be followed by 5 more trials of Simon Says. After the final trial, the subject should recite the plot of the short story to the best of their knowledge, especially with respect to character names, locations, and plot actions. This should be followed by five more trials of Simon Says, then finally, the subject will be given a blank map of the small town and asked to find and identify the major landmarks in the town. The trials with Simon Says is testing the subject’s ability to recall short-term events, while the plot summary is a test to recall long-term events. In the case that the person is not particularly literate, the map of the small town should provide an extra opportunity to test long-term memory. The interruptions with trials of Simon Says also provide an additional challenge for the person’s long-term memory to cope with a current task. I would be interested to see the results of such an experiment.