The following experiment is designed to assess whether students that eat breakfast get higher grades than students that do not eat breakfast. It has been suggested that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and some studies show that eating breakfast can help people to focus for longer periods and to attain their goals (Adolphus et al., 2013).
Variables
In this study, the independent variable is eating breakfast (versus not eating breakfast) and the dependent variable is the grades that the students get. The students would have their baseline grades measured at the outset of the study and be randomized into either the breakfast group or the non-breakfast group. The students in the non-breakfast group would then be asked to avoid eating breakfast for one month, whilst the students in the breakfast group would be asked to ensure that they ate breakfast at the same time every day. The hypothesis is that the students that eat breakfast will have higher grades at the end of the experimental period than those that do not.
Extraneous Variables
One extraneous variable that might affect this experiment is the quality of the breakfast that the students eat. It might be that certain breakfast foods have a stronger effect on overall grades than others. To control for this, a certain type of breakfast could be assigned, or the students could be asked to note down what they ate for breakfast and this should be considered in the results. Random assignment has been chosen as this is the most appropriate way to ensure that groups are roughly equal. This process is blind, meaning that the experimenter does not choose who goes in each group. One way of doing this is to assign each participant a number and then to use a random number generator to assign participants to groups (Haslam & McGarty, 2014).
Ethical Considerations
One ethical issue associated with this study is that asking people to forgo one meal a day might be dangerous for their health. It may be that one of the participants has an eating disorder, for example, and asking them to control their intake acts as a trigger for negative behaviors.
References
Adolphus, K., Lawton, C. L., & Dye, L. (2013). The effects of breakfast on behaviour and academic performance in children and adolescents. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7. Retrieved from http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/85828/
Haslam, S. A., & McGarty, C. (2014). Research methods and statistics in psychology. Sage. Retrieved from https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=UfGGAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=psychology+research+methods&ots=gMJO1KesFF&sig=fkao1a2jfiAYI7us97BKFSbs2XE
