Scientific Questionare
By: Megan Li and Amogh Singhal
Question
Does gender affect the average amount of sleep a person gets?
Hypothesis:
Women, on average, get more sleep than men.
Evidence of Gender not Affecting the Average Amount of Sleep
Gender Affecting the Average Amount of Sleep
This is a chart that shows the amount of sleep in hours on one side. And on the other is the person's gender. And at the bottom of the chart is the mean, SEM, and range for male and female.
Range Showing the Average Amount of Sleep VS. Gender
This graph shows the median and the range as the error bars to show the difference between the two.
SEM Showing the Average Amount of Sleep VS. Gender
This graph shows the median and the SEM as the error bars to show the difference between the genders.
Type of Investigation
This investigation is a comparative investigation because it is collecting data on different organisms or objects to make a comparison between them.
Parts of the Experiment
Independent Variable: Gender
Dependent Variable: Average Amount of Sleep
Constant: None
Control: None
Experimental Group: Males and Females Between the Ages of 14-18
CER
Gender creates no significant difference in the amount of sleep an individual gets every night. The average number of hours slept obtained for women was around 6.4 hours, while it was 6.5 hours for men. These numbers themselves are extremely close, but what shows no statistical difference is the standard deviation and standard error of the mean. The standard deviation for women is .9 and for men it's 1.0. These ranges are extremely similar and show that there isn't a huge difference in the two data sets. The real indication of there not being a real difference in the two data sets, however, comes from the standard error of the means for each data set, as it was 0.22 for the women and 0.42 for the men. This means that the true mean for women can be anywhere from 5.96 to 6.84 hours, and the true mean for men can be anywhere from 5.66 to 7.34 hours. The range for men completely overlaps the range for women which indicates absolutely no significant different in the data. The final set of evidence is the fact that the t-test value of the two sets of data gives a p-value of 0.39. This shows that there is currently not a 95% confidence that the independent variable has an effect, giving the claim that gender does not have an effect on the amount of sleep obtained per night. There was a study of sleep duration in American adolescents by Sarah A. Burgard, Jennifer A. Ailshire, and N. Michelle Hughes. In their experiment it was also concluded that female-male difference are very similar and provide largely consistent conclusions about statistical significance. (Burgard, Ailshire, Hughes) This matches the conclusion in this experiment that gender does not affect the average amount of sleep per night.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the hypothesis of women getting more sleep than men was disproved by the data collected. The data showed a slight difference but not high enough to pass the 95% confidence.
Sources of Inaccuracies/Errors
An inaccuracy in this experiment was the data was more girls than boys. Another source of error came from the precision and accuracy of the experiment, as we were limited to being very imprecise about the amount of sleep one aid, using only integer values, and since there is not a clear way to measure the average amount of sleep and were just asking for estimates, the accuracy of the values can be assumed to be low.
Bibliogrpahy
Michigan, University Of. "Gender and Sleep Duration among American Adults." Gender a Nd S L Eep Dur a T I on a Mong Amer I C a N Adul T S (2010): 1-40. June 2010. Web. 7 Sept. 2015.