Chapter 2 Test on Research Methods is done!  Great work everyone.  Below is a scoring guide for today’s free-response on childhood obesity and video gaming

Case Study:  You should note that Professor Frank should choose one child and gather detailed information about that child’s video game habits and health (such as eating habits, weight, and other related factors).

Survey:  You should note that Professor Frank should gather data from a large sample of children representing his population of children through a survey measuring both video game playing and obesity

Naturalistic Obs:  You should note that Professor Frank should gather data about children’s video game habits and health by observing behaviors in a public setting.

Operational definition:  You should provide at least one correct operational definition for video game playing (such as timing how long children play video games) and obesity (such as calculating body mass index)

Independent and Dependent variables:  You should identify video game playing as the independent variable and obesity as the dependent variable  in the experiment design

Random assignment:  You should explain how participants could be randomly assigned to either the experimental condition or the control condition (the conditions differ based on the independent variable:video game playing)

Ethical guidelines:  This experiment should conform to ethical guidelines for human participants, including accurate descriptions of how the experiments includes informed consent, protection from harm, confidentiality and debriefing.

Use of Statistics: At least one measure of central tendency (mean, median and mode) and the idea that inferential statistics would be used to determine if the difference between the experimental group and the control group is statistically significant.