The study focused on therapy dogs' effect on perceptions of pain in emergency room patients. Photo: monkeybusiness/Deposit Photos Adults and children alike can benefit from petting a therapy dog (a friendly pet who makes rounds with a trainer, perhaps to a clinic, pediatric unit, or even on campus during finals week). In this study, covered …
Category: Internal Validity
Dog people live longer
The study found an association between dog ownership and longevity. Which third variables were controlled for? Which third variables might still be responsible for the relationship? Photo: Shutterstock I can't resist blogging about research on dogs. Here's a story on NPR that summarized several studies that have tested the correlation between longevity and dog ownership. …
Did the show “Thirteen Reasons Why” cause an increase in suicides?
The study used a quasi-experimental design. Credit: Beth Dubber/Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock Update 7/19/2019: Netflix has decided to remove the scene depicting the main character's actual suicide, perhaps in response to data from this and other studies. Here's one story on the change. The Netflix series "Thirteen reasons why" tells the story of a teenage girl who commits …
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Can puppy pictures help your relationship?
Does pairing this cute puppy with a photo of your partner help improve your relationship?Photo credit: Matanya/Wikimedia Commons Professor James McNulty, a social psychologist who studies relationships, was asked by the Department of Defense to develop an intervention to help couples cope with the separation of a deployment. How can couples stay close when their partner …
Do kids do better in private schools?
What evidence would it take to convince us that it's the schools, not other factors, that are responsible for the outcomes of private school students? Photo: Image Source / Alamy Stock Photo A large study has compared the outcomes of children who've attended private schools to those who've attended public schools. A journalist summarized the …
Vacations and job stress
To what extent does the evidence support a causal influence of vacations on happiness and stress? Photo: Syda Productions/Shutterstock Here are some quasi-experimental and correlational studies on vacations, just in time for the end of summer. The APS website describes a few studies consistent with the argument that vacations can be good for your mental …
Measuring charter schools
Are charter schools effective? Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Joel Naroff wrote about the data we might use to decide whether charter schools are doing well. He describes the pitfalls of using achievement test scores to measure school effectivness. His article uses the language of multiple regression and internal validity to describe how difficult this process is. …
Does using marijuana lower your IQ?
A study tested long-term IQ changes of people who smoked marijuana as teenagers. The study is described here. ...participants were tested for IQ twice in the study: once at age 13, and once at age 38. ...researchers found that those who used marijuana regularly before the age of 18 showed a drop in IQ score. …
Should we stop calling people “consumers?”
Time magazine presents a story this month about a line of research on materialism. The full story is accessible here. One of the studies conducted by the research team, led by psychologist Galen Bodenhausen, was on the effect of calling people "consumers" versus "individuals." In one of the study’s tests, participants were presented with the …
Curly or straight? A journalist experiments on her hair…
In this ABC news video, a reporter shows what happened when she presented herself with her naturally curly hair or her straightened hair, in three situations. 1. Consider the first experiment--with the panel of men. a. What were the independent and dependent variables in the reporter's study? b. How did she manipulate the independent variable--as …
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