I need to know what will be my control and experiment group!

[KTH]

Me science fair project is on how the longer you study the better test score you will get. I have 3 experimenters who will be given a lis of names. They will study it and be tested starting with 5 min increasing the time by 5 min.
I just have a question on my control group
and experiment group. My experimenters study 40 names and the number of
minutes that they study for goes up to 50 minutes. And
there are 10 trials with each trial increasing the
time of 5 min when studying. So I was wondering should
I make my control group, which is when studying for a
shorter amount of time, trials 1-5 and my experiment
group, which is studying for a long amount of time, to
be trials 6-10? Or should I do my experiment differently. If I should do it different please tell me how. It is due in 2 days, but I have a LOT to work on.

[leemays]

KTH,

If I understand your project correctly, you don't have it set up for a control and experimental group. If you look at the rest of the Science Buddies website, what you have described is a situation where the independent variable is the amount of time the subjects have to study and the dependent variable is their score on the test.

If you feel your experiment needs a control group, you could have one or more subjects have the same amount of time to study in each trial. That way you could see what effect is due to the longer time and what is due to other factors, such as the content of the list of names (are some easier to remember than others?) and the effect of practicing (if you only have three subjects, are they going to get better at remembering names by the end of the study just by practicing?). I hope this is helpful!

Lee

[EDS]

Me science fair project is on how the longer you study the better test score you will get. I have 3 experimenters who will be given a lis of names. They will study it and be tested starting with 5 min increasing the time by 5 min.
I just have a question on my control group
and experiment group. My experimenters study 40 names and the number of
minutes that they study for goes up to 50 minutes. And
there are 10 trials with each trial increasing the
time of 5 min when studying. So I was wondering should
I make my control group, which is when studying for a
shorter amount of time, trials 1-5 and my experiment
group, which is studying for a long amount of time, to
be trials 6-10? Or should I do my experiment differently. If I should do it different please tell me how. It is due in 2 days, but I have a LOT to work on.

Hi KTH,

It seems to me that you could legitimately claim that your experiment doesn't need a control group. A control group is a great way to make sure that your experiment is testing what you actually think it's testing, or to distinguish between different parameters if it isn't possible to vary only one of them at a time. In this case, there doesn't seem to be much opportunity for confusion.

Breaking the trails in half and calling half of them a control group doesn't sound like a particularly useful plan - it's not clear what you would learn or be able to rule out by doing that.

If you really want to use a control group (or your teacher says you have to do so), you could do something like having one group of people study the same name list during each interval, while the control group studies a different list of names every time. That way you would be able to rule out the possibility that there's something else besides memorizing the list that's causing them to score differently on your tests. For example, they could be learning the format of the test and getting better that way, or they could be getting bored with the experiment and putting less effort into it over time, or maybe the room temperature is changing and making people uncomfortable. All of those seem pretty unlikely in this case, but those are the sort of things a control group would be useful to rule out.

Also, this is just a quick opinion, but you might want to keep open the option of varying the length of time spent by each person and the number of people in the study. Its possible (although I certainly don't know this for sure) that most of the interesting results will happen in the first few rounds. You might end up with more exciting data if you studied ten or twenty people for twenty minutes each, rather than three people for 50 minutes.

Finally, a very minor point. Usually people use "experimenter" to refer to the person conducting the experiment; in this case, that's you. The people who are being experimented on are called "subjects" or "test subjects." Perhaps they should be called experimentees, but no one ever says that for some reason. The difference is arbitrary, but you'll probably end up with red marks on your report if you switch them.

Good luck,
Erik

[EDS]

Started writing mine before yours was posted.

Oh well. I guess two answers can't hurt.

- Erik

[KTH]

Thanks to both of you! Your info really helped a LOT Now I'm almost done with my science project!

Thanks againl,
KTH