Design a Scientific Questionnaire
By: Katrina Songco and Christina Liu Period 5
Question:
Hypothesis
Type of Experiment
Parts of Experiment
Dependent Variable: Hours of sleep a night
Experimental Group: Sophomores and Seniors of Coppell High School
Control: none
Constant: none
Data Table of Hours Spent on Homework and Hours of Sleep a Night
Graphs
Analysis
The amount of hours spent on homework and extracurricular activities did not have a significant effect on the amount of hours of sleep taken a night during the school year. This claim is evident from the results of error bars and t-test values that were calculated. The 2SEM was calculated for both sets of data;hours spent on homework and extracurricular activities and hour of sleep received a night.The 2SEM of hours spent on homework and extracurriculars was .06. The 2SEM of hours of sleep in a given night was .04.The P value that was calculated in the T-Test was .0000005. The 2SEM numbers help create error bar ranges to see if two sets of data have a significant difference between them. When the error bars were drawn on the bar graphs, it was checked to see if the error bars had overlapped in data. Overlapped data means that the two data sets have no significant difference. When the p-value is less than .05% it means that the independent variable did not have an effect. A study was tested in the Journal of Adolescent Health, it was shown that 10% of teens sleep about 5 hours a night and 23% of teens sleep about 6 hours. During the school year, high demands of work,outside activities, and homework in turn lead these teens to not get enough sleep every night (http://www.cfah.org/hbns/2010/most-high-school-students-are-sleep-deprived). So although our results said that amount of homework and amount of sleep are not correlated, many other scientific reasoning's have been tested and show a great deal of correlation between the two variables. The reason why our results did not follow modern scientific theory would best be because of the small amount of students that were asked the questionnaire. If a larger population were to be tested, the results might come out much differently. A larger population would assure that a variety of students with different schedules would be picked, and in turn show a correlation between amount of time spent on extracurricular activities and homework and amount of sleep in a night.
Conclusion
The purpose of this experiment was to test whether or not the amount of homework a student was getting had a positive or negative effect on whether or not a student was getting the recommended hours of sleep a night. When looking at our data results, our hypothesis was proven to not be correct. The two sets of data, the amount of hours spent on homework and extracurriculars and the hours of sleep a student gets a night, did not have an effect on each other.
Sources of Inaccuracies/Errors
In this lab, due to the data we were collecting, some minor human errors could have occurred to alter our final results. Because we usually don’t accurately record the hours of sleep we get on average a night, the data we recorded from the people might have not been as accurate as they could have been. This could affect our final results on whether or not the hours spent on homework and extracurriculars had a positive or negative effect on the hours of sleep they are getting. Adding on the fact that we don’t usually record the amount of sleep we get a night, many people could have put down that they do homework for a longer period or shorter period of time compared to the actual time. This could’ve also affected our comparison of the two results. Also, because the test subject size was so small that an accurate average result could not have been made.