Research Methods Exercise Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Research Methods Exercise - Assignment Example ter a lecture where some teachers purposefully used phrases like â€Å"this concept is difficult† and other teachers taught the lecture without this phrase, students completed a survey indicating their perceived level of difficulty of the content. Directions: Read the scenarios below and identify the following about each research study. One to two words or phrases are fine for answers. This exercise will prepare us for what is to come next week when we evaluate research studies! 1. Researchers wish to examine the behaviors of college students at local bars. They hire young graduate students and train them to go to local college bars every Thursday, Friday, & Saturday night for one month and record their observations of students. To be accurate, the graduate research assistants engage in conversations with the patrons and ask if they are college students. If so, they observe & record the number of drinks consumed and flirtatious behavior over the course of the night. At the end of the month, the graduate students turn in their observations which are synthesized into a descriptive summary of college student behavior at local bars. 2. Research out of the University of Washington examines what happens when students expect to be given alcohol but are actually given a placebo drink (non-alcoholic beverage that looks and tastes like alcohol but has no alcohol in it!). Students are invited to participate in the research study. Researchers then randomly assign students to one of four conditions: 1. expect alcohol/given alcohol; 2. expect alcohol/not given alcohol; 3. not expect alcohol/given alcohol; 4. not expect alcohol/not given alcohol (see the image below for clarification). Students are then instructed to come to the â€Å"Bar Lab† (a laboratory on campus designed to look like a bar; see image below) on their assigned day. Students in the expectation conditions are told that they will be given alcohol that day and then are either given the alcohol in group 1 or given