PCC Reducing Stress Lab Write Up

Part 1: Personal Experience

Describe how you personally felt after going through your chosen treatment. Did you experience a reduction in stress? How do you know? How long did the effects last?

Studies show that stress reduction benefits increase with regular use. How likely are you to continue with either practicing mindfulness meditation or limiting social media use on your own? What are the potential benefits? What could be the challenges of continuing this routine?

Do you think the other stress reduction treatment (the one you did not personally do) would work better or worse for you, compared to the treatment you chose? Why?

Part 2: Experiment Conclusions

Copy and paste the graph you created here (from the Module for Week 4.3 Lab:  “Reducing Stress? Data Analysis“).

Summarize the results of your data analysis as seen in your graph. Did mindfulness practice reduce stress? Did limiting social media use reduce stress? Which one was more effective? Be sure to include specific values from your analysis.

Using at least one source, write a short paragraph about how the stress response might be altered by either mindfulness meditation or limiting social media use (you may pick either). Be sure to describe the physiological basis of the response – what is physically happening in the body? To help you think about physiological changes, remember the measurements you took in class when you were doing the mindfulness meditation and what changes you noticed were occurring. 

Be sure that the source is credible source, and include both an in-text citation and a full citation in your works cited.

Did the results of our experiment agree with your explanation from question #3? Why do you think this might have been the case?

It may be helpful to review your notes from Lesson – Nervous System and the Stress Pathway to integrate relevant physiology information into your discussion.

Part 3: Experimental Design Critique

The goal of this research study is to understand how effectively mindfulness meditation and/or limiting social media use reduce stress levels. An important part of any research study is assessing the significance of the results — How much of these results can be generalized?

Name at least one variable that we did not control for while conducting this experiment (i.e., a variable that we did not measure). Explain what it was and how it could have affected the results.

Identify at least 2 potential limitations of this experiment, considering factors such as the duration of the study, sample size, use of controls, demographics of participants, and measurement protocol. Explain how each of these limitations might affect the interpretation and generalizability of the results. (You may find it helpful to review the Evaluating Experimental Design and Scientific Claims page  as you write this response.)

If you were to conduct another study to test this hypothesis, how could you improve the study design? Explain at least two changes that you would make and why they would improve the quality of this study from a scientific perspective.

What new question(s) do you have based on your findings from this class experiment? Explain. You must list at least one new question.