Imagine that you are about to conduct a study in which you are interested in the
ID: 3469187 • Letter: I
Question
Imagine that you are about to conduct a study in which you are interested in the effects of caffeine on studying. You will have 15 participants. Five will drink 1 cup of coffee before studying, five of them will drink a cup of espresso before studying, and the last five will drink a cup of decaf coffee before studying. After they have each studied for one hour we will give them a test to see how effective their studying was. **For the purposes of this example, please treat the decaf coffee as a caffeine free beverage.
1. independent and dependent variable?
2. State the hypothesis you will be testing
3. How many levels of the indpendent variable are there?
4. What is the control group? Is there one in this study?
6. What is a placebo?
Explanation / Answer
1.Independent variable is coffee as it is being manipulated by the researcher to study its effect on studying behaviour which is the dependent variable. 2.Studying behaviour maybe affected by caffeine. 3..There are 3 levels of independent variable coffee-normal coffee,espresso and decaf. 4.There is no control group in the study since control group is is defined as the group in an experiment or study that does not receive treatment by the researchers and is then used as a benchmark to measure how the other tested subjects do.And in this research,all participants are been given coffee treatment.A control group would exist if you give it water and the other group coffee for making comparisons. 6.A placebo is a substance, such as a sugar pill, that is given to a group of individuals instead of an actual medication. The placebo effect is the impact on an individual of having received a placebo. The impact is often positive.