Study

In this study, the research method used was a survey. She did not change any conditions so it is not an experiment. The two key variables in this study were physical illness due to stress, and stress levels. The operational definition of physical illness is how many days an athlete was absent from school due to illness. The operational definition of stress levels was determined by a test asking the athletes to rate the severity of their stress. On inappropriate ethical feature of this study was forcing the girls to take part in it. They should have been given a choice as to whether or not they wanted to take part. One appropriate ethical feature is that it was merely a survey, not an experiment. She didn't change anything or expose them to additional stressors, but rather collected the information as it was at that time. I think that the best way to organize this data that would best show the results and how they fit the theory is by using measures of variation. If the information was put in a curve, you could see how many of the girls were within what range and could best interpret the data. Two things that would weaken the validity of this study were the fact that she used the first 100 students and did not choose randomly, and also that she allowed them to define stress. Because the first 100 students were used, there might be a bias to one side which would have been lessened if a random sample had been taken. Because she allowed them to define what stress was, they might all have different definitions.