Research Methods

Context

You are a research assistant on a project which is examining the role of cognitive visualisation in influencing heart rate. The project consisted of an experimental design where participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions they were either asked to close their eyes and either imagine themselves going for a run or solving some maths problems. Psychometric and physiological data were collected at several time points

Details of the research study

Participants were invited to come into the laboratory where they provided informed consent. They were asked to complete some questionnaires which assessed demographic and health variables including age, gender, body mass index (BMI), cigarettes smoked per day, and alcohol intake per week. Further they were asked to complete some psychometric questionnaires which assessed personality characteristics including the "Big Five" characteristics (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and dominance.

After completion of these questionnaires, participants were connected to a heart rate monitor which assessed heart rate over periods of baseline (a 10 minute period before the task to ascertain resting heart rate while participants read a soothing nature magazine), the task (a five minute period during which time participants closed their eyes imagined themselves either going for a run or solving maths problems), or recovery (a further 5 minute relaxation period after the task when participants read a soothing nature magazine). Heart rate was repeatedly measured at several time points during these broader experimental phases (i.e., baseline, task and resting) to ensure reliability of measurement.

The data were collected by another researcher on the project and are available for you in the accompanying data set "Quantitative Assessment Data". Supplementary information related to the details of the data set are contained in the data file "Supplementary data set information".

Questions

There are two questions below, each with three parts to them. Please answer all parts of each question . Indicative word counts are outlined, but there is a maximum total word count of 1000 words for this entire component.

You research supervisor would like you to answer the following questions and present your findings in a written format for the rest of the research team to consider.

1. The research team would like to know if heart rate differs between the two task conditions over the phases of the experiment (baseline, task and resting).
   1. Briefly state what method of analysis you have chosen to address this question and explain why this was a suitable choice (approximately 50 words)
   2. Select, run and report the results of suitable statistical analyses (which you described in part a) in an appropriate scientific format, with the use of tables or figures if necessary to support the in-text information (approximately 250 words).
   3. The research team would like your recommendations in relation to future directions for the analysis of the data which has been collected. More specifically, stemming from the already-conducted analyses they would like to know what additional analyses of the data could be performed to better understand these results or these variables? (approximately 200 words)
2. The research team would like to know what demographic and personality factors can predict heart rate during the baseline phase, regardless of task condition. In particular, they are interested to know of the following factors, BMI, smoking, age, alcohol consumption and dominance personality trait, which are the most important in baseline heart rate?

1. Briefly state what method of analysis chosen to address this question and explain why this was a suitable choice (approximately 50 words)
2. Select, run and report the results of the statistical analyses (which you described in part a) in an appropriate scientific format, with the use of tables or figures if necessary to support the in-text information (approximately 250 words).
3. The research team would like your recommendations in relation to future directions for the analysis of the data which has been collected. More specifically, they would like to know what other hypotheses / research questions could be investigated using this data set (specifically, looking at variables not used in the previous analyses) which would further enhance their understanding of the data. Please describe your recommendation(s) and state what analytic approaches could be used to address them. (approximately 200 words)

Price: $32.84

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 24 pages, 884 words and 3 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document