Our chosen research proposal in experimental psychology is quite difficult, something about preferred music and verbal memory within context of studying. There are too many obstacles and complicating factors to consider. Furthermore, most of the related literature indicate that the IV has no significant effect on the DV. Not only is this research highly difficult, it's also meaningless, just like my life.
One of the things that bothers me the most is how we are going to play music for the participants. We can do speakers but they come at a reduced internal validity. We can do earphones but not all of the participants has earphones. Plus the average study length of most students is at least an half an hour yet we don't have that much time. Thus, the best we can do is only let them study for few minutes, which might not be enough time for the treatment to take effect.
Plus even if we don't say anything, the participants are going to immediately guess the hypothesis simply based on the treatment conditions, then try to manipulate their own results based on their perceived researcher's expectations. It's obvious that those given neutral or positive treatment would always try to do better than those who are not given any treatment, the control group.
Another crazy thing is the addition of a neutral placebo music. We have to somehow find a neutral placebo music to mitigate the placebo effect yet we have no idea how a neutral placebo music would sound like. It might be against their preferences or actually within their preference that it would affect the data. We need to find a placebo music that does not have any true effects, except for the placebo value. This is well-nigh impossible.
Therefore, I'm once again suggesting a complete revision of our research proposal, so we can try doing another research that doesn't pose any difficulties concerning the methodology without any ethical concerns. We would like to do an experiment that doesn't take more than 5 minutes to complete and doesn't need extra devices to perform.
What would that be? Maybe something like drinking a glass of water just before studying boosts memory recall compared to those who didn't drink water. Maybe the researcher's words and speech would be independent variable while the participants reactions would be the dependent variable. Let's do this more systematically.
The possible dependent variables are:
The possible independent treatment are:
If it were the future me, I would have done something more fun, like the treatment would be making the participants talk with each other for 5 minutes, then the independent variable would be the participation rate in recitation and activities.
If it were the present me, I would only do some easy meta-research, such as how the amount of observers affect performance, memory, or participation rate.
Since I'm currently the past lazy me, I would like to insist on how drinking water or prayer just before the activity would affect performance, memory, or participation rate.
However, if it were the alternate universe me, I would have done something more abstract, like making the participants imagine something or think about something, then measure how it affects their performance, memory, or participation rate.
Ah maybe I'll tell the participants that what they're about to solve is extremely difficult or extremely easy, then measure how other people's expectations would affect their performance, memory, or participation rate.
Alright that's enough thinking. Here's the list of easiest valid research we can come up with:
After talking with Mr. Bard Gemini for an hour, he came up with very interesting and helpful suggestions that would probably take me more time to figure out by myself:
The Interplay between Time Perception and Emotion:
Control group: Show neutral images instead of emotionally charged ones. Compare perceived time for neutral images to all three emotional categories.
Treatment: Participants are shown emotionally charged images (positive, negative, neutral) while a timer runs. Task: Participants estimate the duration they were shown each image. Measurement: Actual time shown vs. perceived time for each image category is compared.
Group Conformity and Judgment:
Control group: Don't have anyone publicly announce their answer beforehand. Compare conformity rates and accuracy with the initial answer group.
Treatment: Present a visual illusion (e.g., Müller-Lyer illusion) to a group. Let one participant announce their answer publicly (confederate or randomly chosen), followed by individual written responses from everyone.
Measurement: Compare individual responses to the initial answer and the actual illusion effect. Analyze conformity pressure and individual judgment accuracy.
Social Comparison and Self-Esteem:
Control group: Show non-success-related fabricated profiles (e.g., hobbies, travel) or neutral images. Compare self-esteem changes across groups.
Treatment: Show the group fabricated profiles of individuals achieving various levels of success in a relevant domain (e.g., academics, art).
Measurement: Have participants write down their self-reported self-esteem levels before and after exposure to the profiles. Analyze if social comparison influences self-esteem.
Framing and Risk Perception:
Control group: Present the scenario without any framing (neutral presentation). Compare risk-taking intentions across all three framing conditions.
Treatment: Present the same risky scenario to the group, framed in terms of potential gains or losses.
Measurement: Have participants anonymously state their willingness to take the risk in each framed scenario. Analyze how framing influences risk perception and decision-making.
After all that thinking and talking with Mr. Gemini, I've figured out the final criteria that will give me the easiest research for school.
When doing control and independent at the same time:
Counterbalancing: You can counterbalance the order of treatments (e.g., doing half in positive framing then negative, vice versa) within the same group to control for order effects.
Here's the criteria of easiest experimental research:
After a few months, some brilliant ideas for experiments came to mind:
The first one is a multiple-groups independent experiment with two independent variables entitled "The Impact of Randomness and Communication on Experiment Attendance."
For this experiment, the first group is composed of randomized subjects with minimal explanation, the second group is composed of non-randomized subjects of a single group with minimal explanation, and the third group is composed of randomized subjects with highest explanation. If we have extra time, we can add a fourth group which is composed of non-randomized subjects with highest explanation. What I will measure then, is how many of them will attend within each group.
I think adding a fourth group "non-randomized high explanation group" would add a lot of things to the study because each experimental group would have their own counterpart and control, the study would be more symmetrical that it might be appropriate to use t-tests many times instead of using one anova with post-hocs. Plus I think the reliability of the study would increase because there's two non-randomized groups, so there will be less confound because of their group characteristics.
I believe significant differences would be much easier to detect with a 4 group design with lower subjects each group (e.g. 30 per group) than with 3 group design with more subjects per group (e.g. 40 per group). However, we can't just make the students attend for nothing, we have to make a plausible cover story which can another true experiment on its own. Therefore, it might be possible to make a double-layered experiment where the cover story is like the second supplemental experiment that can also be analyzed like any true experiments but this supplemental experiment will be easier and less-time consuming, so this will maximize the utility of this four-group design.
This sort of thing can only be possible because the conditions and manipulations for the first main experiment is too easy and subtle that it can be called a quasi-experiment instead. With this, it might be possible for one to create two different research papers with just one experiment. However, the cover story experiment (Layer 2) should be carefully designed to avoid influencing attendance (Layer 1) or vice versa, plus the researcher who would be giving the explanation speech should be the same and their content should be the same.
I think more negatives draw out higher statistical power, like in the effects of music to short term memory, it's statistically better to have lower than optimal memorization and test time than to have higher than optimal memorization and test time.
So in this experiment, I think having a little harder layer 2 experiment would produce a more stark contrast on the effects of layer 1 experiment. It's unavoidable for those two layers to influence each other, we might as well let them influence each other in a good positive way that benefits the experiment. Of course, the layer 2 experiment shouldn't be too hard that it would confound the layer 1 experiment and change the attendance of subjects for other reasons than explanation and randomization.
One cool suggestion by the Gemini chatbot is using the layer 2 experiment as a way to make subjects learn a new skill, so we can have a layer 2 experiment where we measure like the time, efficiency, or effectivity of learning a simple skill. For other subjects, it might make the experiment more fun and they would want to attend but it can make the other subjects more annoyed and not want to attend as well. Thus, even if slightly more negativity can increase the statistical power of the layer 1 experiment, I don't think the increase itself would be statistically significant for us to worry about it. There might be some confounds but we can just say that these other little confounds make the study a little more naturalistic and increase the external ecological validity.
"Chatbots are blessing from the Gods!"