Question

Activity 5

            For this week’s activity, I want you to read a proposal / idea for a study and write about the “fatal flaw” in their design. This is a fun way to investigate the potential confounding or extraneous variables to the hypothesis that is being tested in an experiment. This is also a good way to show in a concrete way the considerations that researchers make on a regular basis. Please read the following prompt and answer the question below it in one or more paragraphs.

Prompt:

A researcher is interested in whether listening to sad music can affect your mood. As such, she has participants first rate their current mood (using a valid and reliable measure), then listen to either a sad or neutral sound clip for ten seconds. After the ten seconds, she has participants rate their mood again. She concludes that music might not have an effect on mood.

Explain and write in one or more paragraphs the fatal flaw(s) in the prompt above:

Answer 1

A fatal flaw in the study is that it is attempting to detect a change in the participants mood in just under a minute. Moods are pervasive in nature and cannot be changed so easily. It would make more sense to conduct a between subjects comparison. Furthermore, the researcher is also exposing the participants to merely 10 seconds of sound, which is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on them. The duration of the musical piece should be increased in length.