A group of researchers wanted to test whether mindfulness could increase people’

Question

A group of researchers wanted to test whether mindfulness could increase people’s concentration and productivity. Mindfulness is a meditative technique in which people are told to focus their attention on the present without distraction. It is a means on concentrating on one's thoughts and feelings in the moment and is thought to have beneficial effects on people's moods and productivity. In 2012, researchers placed human resources professionals in a one-person office, with a laptop and a phone, and asked to complete several typical work tasks (e.g., schedule meetings, locate free conference rooms, write a memo, etc.). The list of tasks was supposed to be completed in 20 minutes or less. After the multitasking free-for-all, participants were divided into three groups: one was assigned to an eight-week meditation course (two hours of instruction, weekly); another group didn’t take the course at first, but took it later; and the last group took an eight-week course in body relaxation. Afterwards, everyone was put through a second round of multitasking frenzy. The only participants to show improvement were those who had received the mindfulness training. Not only did they report fewer negative emotions at the end of the assignment, but their ability to concentrate improved significantly. They could stay on task longer and they switched between tasks less frequently. While the overall time they devoted to the assignment didn’t differ much from that of other groups, they spent it more efficiently. They also remembered what they did better than the other participants in the study.  

The study above is an experiment.

1. However, was this a simple Between-groups, simple Within-groups, factorial Between-groups, factorial Within-groups, or factorial mixed design?

2. From the 4 designs discussed for experiments, what type of design was used in this study (posttest only, pretest/ posttest, concurrent, or repeated-measures)? How do you know?

3. There are several dependent variables mentioned in this study. Draw at least three conclusions from the results described.

Explanation / Answer

Answer to question# 1)

In this design: there are three groups , and each group is compared to its on before perfromance , and to other groups as well. thus it incorporates the features of within design and between design .

SUch a design is called Factorial Mixed design.

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Answer to question# 2)

It was a pretest and posttest design , we get to know this by knowing that the task assigned before applyign the experiment. this was pretest observation. Then the task was again assigned after the experiment. This was the posttest obsevration. Thus this was a pre-test -post test design

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Answer to question# 3)

The three conclusions are as follows:

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