Research assignment
Megan Ortwein
SAS- Pudong
General Psychology
B-block

You are working for a scientific research group who has just been asked to conduct an objective experiment for small natural foods company. They have developed a pill which claims to improve short term memory and sharpens mental alertness with no side effects. The natural ingredients include guarana, gota kola and fish oil as active agents. The research should test the effectiveness of new all natural pill and scientifically prove that this new product is safe and effective. Your company hopes to target young High school and college students who have semester and final exams.

Describe the elements of your experiment in short descriptive paragraphs and identify which method research you will use.

Identify the following in your research

Hypothesis: I think that this pill will successfully increase mental alertness and short term memory.
Population: 250 students Freshmen and 250 Sophomores.
Sample: Take 20 people from each grade and make 10 of them take the pill, and 10 of them not take the pill.
independent and dependent variables: Indepentdent: people who don’t take the pill Dependent: people who take the pill.
control and experimental groups in experiment: The people who do take the pill will be the experimental group and the ones who don’t will be the control.
Population: Of the 500 students 40 of them will be included in my experiment.
Sample: The 40 students included in my experiment.

In this experiment I used the sampling method which is when you take one large group of people and pick randomly a certain amount of people, half of which take the pill, half of which don’t the ones that do not take the pill are still a part of the experiment because you have to compare the people taking the pill to the people not take the pill to see the difference.
First I would get my groups of people together and split them into two groups. 20 in the pill taking group, and 20 in the non pill taking group. then i would do certain tests to see how the people react. for example, i would take 1 person who took the pill, and one who didn't and i would teach them a certain lesson and give them a quiz right after. i would then grade the quizes and if the person who took the pill got a higher score, then the pill is probably working. i would do this test with all the students and compare the data.
more specific details about quiz and information on it.



Consult text pages 24-25, 28, 37-40
8/10 pts = HW grade