Everyday Research Methods

Just in time for finals: Beware of distractions

Responding to texts while you are working can cause work quality to suffer. Photo credit: Amble Design/Shutterstock

Do you study and write with your phone buzzing away nearby? Do you work in a location where roommates and friends can stop by to chat? Have you ever wondered what the impact of such distractions might be on the quality of your work? As you prepare for your final papers, projects, and exams, here is an experimental study of the effects of distractions on your work quality. 

The website of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) summarized the research. 

Lead author Cyrus Foroughi did his own anecdotal study on how many interruptions he experienced on a quiet Monday morning: “In those two hours, I received five text messages, one phone call, about a dozen messages on Gchat and six emails. A fellow graduate student wandered into my room twice to strike up a conversation...."

With this experience in mind, the researchers were interested in how interruptions affect the overall quality of a person’s work.

“To study this topic, we needed a task whereby quality could be defined beyond the number of errors made or time to complete the task,” Foroughi and colleagues explain. “We selected a complex, creative thought task that mirrors a common real-world task, outlining and writing an essay.”

Before reading on, reflect: What do you think the dependent variable will be in their study? What will the independent variable be?  Read on to see if you were correct. 

[In one of two studies], around 50 college students were asked to write three essays based on standard college essay prompts created by the College Board. Participants were given 12 minutes to plan and outline their essays on paper, and then were given 12 minutes to actually write their essays using a computer and keyboard.

While they working on their essays, the students were interrupted at random intervals with sets of unrelated puzzle tasks, like solving math problems or unscrambling words. Participants were instructed to complete as much of the interruption task as possible during each of the 60-second interruptions before switching back to working on their essays. These interruptions occurred during two of the three essays so that each participant completed an essay under each of the three conditions (i.e., no interruptions, interruptions during the planning phase, and interruptions during the writing phase).

The essays were then assessed by two trained graders based on a 0-6 scale drawn from the College Board Essay Scoring Guide. The researchers also analyzed the total number of words written and participants’ accuracy on the interruption tasks.

 

Now that you've read the summary, answer these questions:

a) What is the independent variable? How many levels are there and what are they? What was the dependent variable? (Note--there were a few DVs, as is true in most experiments)

b) Was the independent variable manipulated as independent groups or within groups? What keywords helped you figure this out? 

c) What kind of design was it? Posttest only? Prettest-posttest? Repeated measures? Concurrent measures? 

 

Here are the results:

In both of the interruption conditions the essays received significantly lower ratings compared with the control condition — on average, interrupted students received scores that were about half a point lower on the rating scale.

d) Sketch a graph of the results they describe above. 

Think about what you can do to minimize distractions as you prepare your final work at the end of the semester. Your GPA will thank you!

 

Suggested answers

a) The independent variable was "type of distraction" with three levels: No distraction, distraction during planning, and distraction during writing. The dependent variables included number of words in the essay, and coded quality of the essay on a 0 to 6 scale. 

b) The independent variable was manipulated as within-groups. One cue is that the author states students "were asked to write three essays" (so you know they saw all three levels of the IV). Another cue is this statement: "each participant completed an essay under each of the three conditions."

c) This is a repeated measures design

d) Your graph should have "essay quality" or "essay words total" on the y-axis. On the x-axis, three bars, one for "no distractions" one for "distractions during planning" and one for "distractions during writing."

 

 

 

Getting teens to eat healthier

Which snack do the big food companies want you to pick? Photo: Shutterstock

Like everyone, teenagers need nutritious food to stay healthy.  Most American teens probably consume too much soda, chips, and other junk food. But have you ever tried convincing a teen to eat better? Perhaps you remember back to your high school health classes: You may not have been convinced when the adults in charge tried to persuade you to eat less junk food and more fruits and vegetables.

One new study tried a different approach, as summarized in this journalist's report. Researchers tried to take advantage of teenagers' disregard for authority figures, making healthy eating seem like an act of defiance. 

According to a new study from the University of Texas (UT), ... teenagers can be encouraged to eat healthy foods if they see doing so as a way to rebel against authority....the research suggests that informing teenagers about the manipulative tricks used by big companies to sell junk food reduces their taste for unhealthy snacks.

Study co-author David Yeager [said] “If the normal way of seeing healthy eating is that it is lame, then you don’t want to be the kind of person who is a healthy eater. But if we make healthy eating seem like the rebellious thing that you do, you make your own choices, you fight back against injustice, then it could be seen as high status.”

To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted two studies on teens aged 13 to 15. 

The teens were randomly split into two groups, with one being assigned an article to read on the long-term health benefits of eating a balanced diet. The other group read an expose on the manipulative techniques used by the food industry to sell unhealthy products, such as deceptive labelling and advertising that targets children from poor backgrounds.

The next day, in an unrelated class, the teenagers were each given a snack-pack as a reward from their headteacher for hard work. They could choose the contents of the pack themselves, deciding between snacks like Oreos and Doritos, or healthier options such as carrots and trail mix.

...Just 43 percent of the teens who had learned about the sneaky tricks of the food industry chose unhealthy options, compared to 54 percent of those who had received the health-related information the day before. There was a smaller decrease in preference for sugary drinks but overall, the sugar content of the food-industry-woke teens’ snacks was reduced by 9 percent.

a) What kind of experiment is this? Posttest only? Prettest posttest? Repeated measures? or Concurrent measures?

b) What are the IVs and DVs in the design?  (Hint: There is more than one dependent variable.)Is the independent variable manipulated as independent groups or within groups?  What keywords in the description tell you how the independent variable was manipulated?   

c) Sketch a small graph of the study's results. Pick one of the dependent variables to graph.

d) What do you think? Can this study support the causal claim that "reading an article about the manipulative techniques of the food industry causes teens to select more healthy snacks"? Apply the three causal criteria of covariance, temporal precedence, and internal validity.