The experimental method allows for the study of cause and effect relationships.

Question

The experimental method allows for the study of cause and effect relationships. An experimental design requires controlled elements in order to make these causal statements. For this assignment you will be asked to use several key concepts of an experiment.

Researchers are interested in learning whether listening to music while studying improves memory. Design an experiment to test whether music can improve memory of nonsense syllables of 40 college students.

1. What is the independent variable?

2. What is the dependent variable?

3. How will you select your sample from the population?

4. How will you select who is assigned to the control or experimental groups?

5. Describe the procedure for the experimental group.

6. How will you limit the effects of experimenter bias and demand characteristics?

Explanation / Answer

1. Independent variable is listening to music. Independent variable is a variable whose variation is not influenced by another variable. Here listening to music will not be influenced by any other factor, hence it is independent variable.

2. Dependent variable is variable whose value depends on that of another variable. In this case memory would be the dependent variable as we need to determine whether or not listening to music influences this variable (memory).

3.The sample will be selected randomly from a college. Simple random sample is subset of the population (in this study population is college students). In a random sample, each person has an equal probability to be chosen. The subjects are picked by using lottery method.

4. Control group is the group which will not receive the variable being tested. In this case students who do not listen to music while studying are the control group. While the experimental group is the group which receives the test variable being studied. In this case, the students who listen to music while studying are the experimental group. The students can be assigned in two ways. (i)from thes sample of 40 students, students who already listen to music while studying can be assigned to the experimental group and the remaining are in the control group. or (ii) Randomly select 20 students of the sample of 40 students and ask them to listen to music while studying. The remaining 20 are assigned to the control group and are asked not to listen to music while studying.

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