Psychology 2430
Psychological Research in APA format
Study:
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A behavioral psychologist conducts an experiment to determine whether operant conditioning techniques can be used to improve balance in people who consider themselves
“clumsy.” She recruits 50 partcipants, each of whom responds yes to the question “Do you consider yourself clumsy?” on a pre-experimental questionaire. Half the
partcipants are given a balance task (stand on one foot with your arms in the air) with the time they can balance recorded. They are then excused and asked to return 3
weeks later. The other half of the partcipants are asked to perform the balance task described above. Each time they can beat their previous balance time, they receive
$10. After the 3-week period, all participants are asked to perform the balance task again. Alpha is set at .05. The members of the Training Group can balance for an
average of 25 seconds. Members of the Control Group (who did not receive the training) can balance for an average of 24.3 seconds. When the inferential statistical
test is conducted on the data, p= .08.
1. What is the IV for this study? The DV? 2. What is the alternative hypothesis? 3. What is the null hypothesis? 4.What population is being tested in this study? 5. Is
the difference observed in the study statistically significant? Why or why not? 6. Based on your answer to (5) above, what decision should be made about the null
hypothesis? 7. In the context of this experiment, what exactly is p the probability of?
