Question

A psychologist who studies attention designed a study to investigate whether talking on a cell phone interferes with driving.   She randomly assigned 60 subjects to three conditions: (a) talking while holding cell phone, (b) talking while using a car speaker phone, and (c) no cell phone control condition.  All subjects participated in 20 minutes of driving in a high-fidelity car simulator.    Driving performance was measured by a composite score that assessed how well the driver maintained the speed limit, stopped for stop signs and red lights, and signaled appropriately when turning or changing lanes.    Each subject drove 10 minutes under light driving conditions and 10 minutes and heavy traffic.

The results showed that there was no difference in driving performance between hand-held cell phones and hand-free cell use, but both of these conditions were significantly worse than the control condition of no cell phone.   Further analysis showed that the difference between the two cell phone conditions and the control condition was significantly higher when subjects were driving under heavy traffic compared to light traffic.   Overall, performance was worse for heavy traffic than light traffic.

What type of research design was used? What were the independent variables?  What type of subject assignment was used? What were the main effects?  Was there an interaction? What are reasonable conclusions to draw from the study?

Answer 1

Subject- Find the significant difference between cell phone users and non-users during the driving a car.

Research design- The research design used in the proposed research was experimental and we used group methods with control environment. There were three groups of individual assigned with different collective tasks.

Independent variables- Vehicles, Speed limits, Traffic, time of driving etc., these variables effects the dependent variables like driving skills and attention.

Type of subject assignment- The subject assignment was experimental study with factor analysis.

Main effects- The study was conducted to find the significant difference if use of cell phone while driving effects the skill and control.

Conclusion-The result of research described that the condition of cell phone uses do not affect the driving control but phone using and non-using significantly affected the control and skills. If we use cell phone at any condition either hand use or hands free do not affect the driving condition but difference between user and non-user show the significant difference.