Research with Professor Winer

I Met with Professor Winer and I enquired if he was doing any research studies at the moment and he said oh yes I am. I asked him if I could join just to see and perharps learn from it, he accepted and I was so pleased to go and see what he was researching on. First of all It was very intresting to see what his studies was all about. He was researching on::: (a) Suppose you want to develop a treatment program for children who are afraid of the dark. You interview children and parents and you learn that children’s fearfulness varies considerably from one night to another. Although the children are fearful most nights, sometimes they are not afraid. You also learn that many of the kids report nightmares regarding monsters, vampires and burglars. You wonder: are kids afraid of the dark itself, or are they only afraid of the dark when they have fearful images? To test this idea, you set up a 2 (Illumination: Light vs Dark) by 2 (Images: Fearful or Neutral) factorial study, and you use heart rate to measure the children’s fear levels.
(!)Let’s say you found a significant main effect for illumination and a significant main effect for fear images but no interaction. Draw a graph to show how such results would look (note: heart rates should fall between 80 and 130 beats per minute). How would you interpret the graph conceptually?
(!!) Lets say instead you found a significant main effect for fear images and a significant interaction. What would the graph of the results look like? How would you interpret these results? This was a very intresting research to work on cause we had to do some calculations, and findings as well as correlation effect if one thing led to the other, or if one thing causes another. Also Profeessor winner had us, I and some other students as well as the TA's under him work on another of his research, which is as followed, :::

A researcher wonders about how social influence affects cognitive ability. She takes a sample of 40 introverts and 40 extroverts and asks them to solve some difficult math problems in a crowded room and an uncrowded room. The researcher measures the number of problems solved (numbers can range from 0 problems solved to 25 problems solved).

Factor A
Crowded Room Uncrowded Room
Factor B Introverts 12 18
Extroverts 18 12




a. Name the independent variable Factor A
i. Identify whether Factor A is between-subjects experimental, within-subjects experimental, or non-experimental?
b. Name the independent variable Factor B
c. Identify whether Factor A is between-subjects experimental, within-subjects experimental, or non-experimental?
d. Name the dependent variable?
e. What is the scale of measurement for the dependent variable?
f. If the researcher wants 40 people per cell, how many subjects are required for this study
g. Calculate and label marginal means



Part 2:::
i. If there is a main effect of Factor A, describe in words. If there is not a main effect of Factor A, describe how the groups do not differ.
ii. If there is a main effect of Factor A, describe in words. If there is not a main effect of Factor A, describe how the groups do not differ.
h. Is there an interaction? Describe what your overall results mean in words. If there is an interaction, describe how the interaction qualifies any significant main effects.

It was pretty intense but I didnt regret joining them to figure out how to do this measures and figuring out the answers to these questions, and it was fun!!! The kids were sampled by randomazation, meaning likely hood of any member of the population is beign selected is known, random selection. It was intresting to know that a group of board members has to be notified to approave this research before he can go ahead to do it, they are called the IRB. Also the consent of both the children and their parents are needed before anything can be done, that is called informed consent. Whereby participants in the research must knowingly agree to participate in the study and participants must know what the study is on and the purpose of it. If they are not told it means you have deceived them and that is called Deception, hiding the true purpose of a study task from participants. Also if one does that one needs to tell participants at the end of the study the truth, and purpose why you did the test or experimental study, and that is called Debriefing, explaining the true purpose for the study including reasons for the deception. Which is to minimize negative effects, to convey educational value, to reveal conditions, and so that they don't feel duped.lol It was fun I can tell you that.