Reading about Experiments

Find a research article in a psychology or social science journal that reports the results of an experiment.

Answer the following questions about the study.

1. List the author(s), title of article, journal, month and year of publication, and pages.

2. What is one hypothesis that the research was designed to test? Identify the independent and dependent variables.

3. Describe the sample.

4. How many groups were used and how were they selected? Is there a control group?

5. Was there a pretest? If so, describe it.

6. How was the independent variable (or the stimulus) manipulated, controlled, or introduced?

7. Was there a post-test? If so, describe it.

8. What kind of experimental design was used pretest and post-test experiment, a post-test only experiment, a Solomon four-group, a comparison group quasi-experiment, or some other kind? Give support for your answer.

9. Comment on the issues of internal validity and generalizability as they apply to this study.