Research Methods On Behavioral Sciences

Research Methods On Behavioral Sciences

Introduction

Researchers have examined the relationship between delayed gratification to a child and the variables that are related to the success of the child. The success may entail future scores in SAT and higher competence. Hence in reference to this, the essay will outline a logical hypothesis that identifies two variables, describe the appropriate research strategy and research design then give the interpretation of data to draw the appropriate conclusion. Although the paper will be more based on logic rather than research studies to justify the hypothesis.

Hypothesis

Researchers wanted to examine the effects delayed gratification on academic achievement

The study contains the memory test as the independent variable that is intended to measure and a potentially confounding variable. The variable is the success in the score in the SATSs. Despite the independent and dependent variables in this study, there are also the extraneous variables that are the ages, gender, weights, personalities, anxiety, and IQ. A confounding variable must vary systematically with the independent variable, although any variable that changes with no relation to the independent variable is a threat. The first step in the study is to ensure control of the extraneous variables (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018). For example, while assessing memory performance, IQ is quite a reasonable choice that can potentially be a confounding variable. Also, if age is even a variable, it could affect memory performance reasonably. The identification process of this variable is solely based on simple logic reasoning, common sense, and experience (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018).

Research Strategy

The researchers will match different groups of individuals, which will be an easy way to ensure that the specific participants do not become confounding variables. Although before matching the nay group to their respective participant variable, the researcher must first measure the particular variable. The groups should be matched in terms of intelligence, age, gender, and also some few sophisticated juggling strategies to make sure that all the three variables are balanced since it is even logical that the ability to delay gratification increases with age. Measure delayed gratification using an animation game that will be created specifically for this study. The participants will be asked to help free a city by beating up an evil wizard. To play the game, 23 decisions will be stipulated to enhance the memory performance of the participants. This measurement procedure cold is tedious, costly, and also could work some more work into the study. More so, the researchers should use the matching variables that will have a strong potential to be confounding. For example, IQ could be a very significant variable that could affect memory tests; hence it would make more sense to match these two variables together. The research could hold some variables constant in this research in that if the researcher is more concerned with the potential IQ differences, test instead he would ensure that he restricts the participants with the IQS that range between 100-110 and hence t would be reasonable to expect that all the groups have at least an equivalent IQ level (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018). Furthermore, the researchers could also prevent some variables from reaching their full range of natural variation to limit the external validity for the sake of the study. Since we also know that the result that could be obtained from a narrow range of IQs cannot be generalized for the whole population; hence it would not be effortless to generalize the results.

Research Design

The goal of the matched design that is stipulated for this design is to duplicate all the advantages that are established from between and within-the subject designs. The research design is a matched-subject design; each individual in every group is matched with an equivalent participant in each of the other adjacent groups (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018). This is to ensure that the design of the research comes out in the way that all the matched participants are equivalent to one particular variable. In the subject-design, the equivalent participants are the same people, and in the matched-subject design are in a way that the equivalent participants are the matched sets of people. It is also relatively possible to match participants with more than one variable. The match-subject design is just a crude approximation of the repeated measure design. However, there is a mere degree of individuals with a degree of similarity that is limited to the variables used for the matching process because despite having two individuals with the same IQ, there could be no guarantee that the same or similar (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018). For a compelling study to be established, two distinct populations should be found. A random group with a sample of 20 participants from the overall community should be selected and then sampled into groups with at least ten members in each particular group. One group is then assigned to a specific control condition that does not affect the participants whatsoever. Then the second group is attached to a treatment strategy for the delay gratification (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018). The variance will be used to measure the size of the difference from one score to the other to makes sure that the hypothesis research study is conducted. The primary threat to validity in this study is the confounding variables, which will be addressed by ensuring that they are merged with a similar and appropriate participant of delay gratification, as illustrated above.

Interpretation Of Data

The statistical analysis of the results from the factorial study will be based on the fact of whether the factors are between-subjects, within-subjects, or both. The standard practice to compute the mean of treatment for memory test and academic excellence will be analyzed using the (ANOVA) variance analysis to establish the significance of the between-subjects and within-subjects to study the correlation between the variance of the which need one to be very cautious. The two factors ANOVA separates the hypothesis tests (Gravetter,  & Forzano,2018). Whereby T-uses the F-ratio to determine the actual significant difference between the subject factors. Hence the participants’ tendency to delay gratification is significantly linked to the factor of achieving academic excellence and higher memory performance. Therefore the participants that greater focus on self-enhancement prefer to maximize their rewards, and thus their memory performance is high, which in the long run turns out they excel in their academics. And also, the significant difference in variance from the statistical ANOVA analysis shows that the participants had a great possibility to ignore the current reward, which was a correlation for low variability in delayed gratification.

Conclusion

The results obtained from this study support our hypothesize of the effects of delay in gratification on academic achievement and memory performance. The results accordingly show that there are potential gains and distractions on the ability to retain a future reward; hence it helps to keep a memory. Finally, further studies will have significant implications to understand how motivation to develop gratification should be made efficient.

References

Gravetter, F. & Forzano, L. A. (2018). Research methods for the behavioral sciences. (6th ed.) Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. ISBN-13: 978-1337613316.