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AP Psychology
Essay Questions Essay I (Part A): Design a correlational study to examine the relationship between exposure to sunshine and depression level. a) Sample: Take a random sample of subjects from the Guido Institute or from another population of patients diagnosed with clinical DEPRESSION. (50-100 subjects would be plenty). (1 pt) b) Operationalize your variables: You can measure “exposure to sunshine” by simply noting how many hours each patient spends outside in the sunshine per week. You can measure “depression” by administering a depression inventory of some kind. (2 pts) c) How to carry out the study: You simply need to measure the two variables over a specified period of time. You lose this point if you talk about assigning subjects to different groups, mention an independent or dependent variable, or talk about the manipulation of one of your variables. (1 pt) d) Interpret an “r” of -.72: This is strong negative correlation that suggests as exposure to sunshine increases, depression decreases. (1pt) e) Interpret an “r” of +.64: This is a fairly strong positive correlation that suggests as exposure to sunshine increases, so does depression. (1 pt) Note: You can lose additional points by suggesting any type of cause and effect relationship between the two variables.
Essay I (Part B): Design a true experiment to determine if exposure to sunshine causes a change in level of depression. a) Hypothesis: You predict that the group of depressed patients who spend (a specified amount of) time outside in the sunshine will be significantly less depressed than those patients who spend no time outside in the sunshine. (1 pt) b) Operationally define the independent variable: The IV is time spent outside in the sunshine. You will manipulate this variable by having half of the subjects spend a specified amount of time outside each day (or week) in the sunshine. At the same time, you will have the other subjects stay inside through the study. (1 pt) The DV is level of depression. You will measure this variable by administering a depression inventory to all subjects at the conclusion of the study. (1 pt) c) Identify the control group: This is the group of subjects that is instructed to spend no time outside. (1 pt) Identify the experimental group: This is the group that is instructed to spend a specified amount of time outside in the sunshine. (1 pt) d) Identify two control techniques used in your study and explain what they control: 1) Random assignment of subjects to the experimental and control groups MUST be mentioned. An experiment is not a true experiment without it. Random assignment controls pre-existing subject variables. 2) The use of a control group controls history effects. Additionally, if you decided to give a depression test at the beginning and end of the study, having a control group controls testing effects. Using a single-blind design would control experimenter bias. You could not implement a double-blind design because the subjects would obviously know whether or not they had spent anytime outside. Other control measures: In general, you want to ensure that both groups are treated in as similar a way as possible during the study. Thus, important controls would be studying both groups during the same time of year and over the same number of months. There are many other possibilities (4 pts.) Types and levels of medication being used by the subjects would NOT be a problem as long as you used random assignment when forming your control and experimental groups. |
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