Experimental Design - Essay Example

Hypothesis: Sleep-deprived are more likely to get lower grades on tests. Methodology of experimental design In this study, the proponent will try to approach specific respondents from a University. The researcher should know the total number of the students in the registrar who were officially registered. This is the remarkable basis of having the right number of samples in order to generate statistically significant result. Concerning this study, the proponent will initiate a random sampling so that all probable respondents will have equal chance to be chosen until a desired number of samples is obtained.

At least 10 percent of the population will be randomly chosen and a letter of intent concerning the study will be given to the University and each chosen student. All the respondents will be informed that the study will only take overnight, to check their ability on exams. Some respondents will be randomly immersed to a sponsored party overnight, in a place where they are not allowed to go and only stay there until the end of the study, but no drinks or any alchohol related beverages will be provided.

The participants will also be discouraged to take energy drinks and other related content that could help boost mental performance. Other participants will be placed to an atmosphere where they could have a good night rest, the control group. Prior to the actual study, participants will also be screened concerning their health condition, to make sure that all random samples have better health, ensuring further that the study will reflect on the individuals with good health and their cognitive ability when faced with sleep deprivation.

Students will not be allowed to sleep until a desired time and they also have to wake up on a scheduled time to take the exam with general knowledge questions that would require analysis. Performance on the test should be scaled from poor to best from 1 to 5 based on how they would analyze a very objective question. Dependent and independent variablesThe dependent variables of this research study is the students’ actual performance or score on the test. The independent variables are the hour of sleep incurred prior to taking the exam and the students’ actual record of academic performance.

This study includes the actual generated way of creating sleep deprivation in order to test whether this could affect the students’ performance on the test. However, one potential variable that could also influence the students’ performance is their actual academic performance. This could potentially reflect their innate mental capacity. In this study, if there is no significant impact of their mental performance on their regular daily activities to their actual test performance, then the proponent could remarkably justify that sleep deprivation indeed, provided that there would be significant result could be a potential independent variable to affect the students’ grades on tests.

Experimental and control conditionsThe experimental and control conditions include the point of making sure that the entire study would produce relevant result. That is why to justify the experiment, the respondents will initiate another set of exams to be employed to control groups, those who received enough hours of sleep. Thus, equal number of respondents from the experimental and control group should be remarkable. Furthermore, the record of actual mental performance of the chosen respondents will be taken into account.

That is, their actual academic performance in school should be generated in order to create a good idea of the actual condition of the experiment.