1. Be able to design research given a scenario. For example: You decide to study the effects of distracted driving on attention. Design the study. Two groups? More than two? Repeated measures? Counterbalancing? Factorial? Identify IV’s, DV’s, CV’s. State the hypothesis/purpose. Give complete rationale, explanation.
2. Be able to identify IV’s, DV’s and come up with potential control variables (extraneous variables) that need to be controlled in any given study.
Example:
Researchers are interested in whether or not Incontinence in the elderly can be cured without drugs.
Answer:
IV would be various non-medical intervention treatments, DV is amount or degree of incontinence – maybe weigh the depends diapers every two hours, confounds might be age – so maybe match subjects or use age as another IV, gender also because males and females may differ in degree of incontinence at same ages, availability of bathroom facilities (if in a nursing home it may be down the hall, while in home care it may be a private bath off the bedroom, or some places may have better nursing care than other places).
