Effect of exercise on mental health
One area of clinical practice that interests me in the adult population is the effect of exercise on mental health, particularly in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. A potential research study could examine how a structured exercise program impacts adults with mild to moderate depression.
In this study, the independent variable (IV) would be the exercise intervention (e.g., participants engaging in a 12-week structured workout program). The dependent variable (DV) would be the effect of exercise on mental health, measured through changes in anxiety and depression levels using standardized psychological assessments (Smith & Jones, 2020).
Extraneous variables could include age, diet, medication use, baseline fitness level, and social support. To control for these, researchers could use random assignment, ensure a balanced sample, and collect baseline data to adjust for pre-existing differences (Brown et al., 2019).
Threats to internal validity could include selection bias, participant dropouts, and placebo effects. Researchers could mitigate these by using randomization, ensuring follow-ups, and incorporating a control group receiving a placebo intervention like light stretching (Miller & Taylor, 2021).
Threats to external validity might include the study\’s generalizability, as results could differ based on gender, socioeconomic background, or access to fitness resources. Researchers could control for this by recruiting a diverse sample and conducting multi-site studies (Johnson, 2018).
The best time dimension for data collection would be a longitudinal study, measuring mental health improvements at different time points (e.g., baseline, 6 weeks, and 12 weeks) to assess long-term effects (Williams et al., 2022).
Student 2
One clinical finding that I found interesting is how scientists ruled out how baby skin-to-skin (called kangaroo care) helps infants gain more weight than if they stay in an incubator. This typically starts very early, once the baby is born (About Skin-To-Skin Care, 2024).
The thing being tested, which is considered the “independent variable,” is kangaroo care. Their method is determined when parents hold their baby skin-to-skin. The results are what they are measuring, which is a dependent variable. They want to know how much weight the babies gain each day when this method is being used (A Guide to Independent, Dependent, and Controlled Variables, 2019).
Other things could change a baby’s weight that aren’t part of the test. These are called extraneous variables (Bhandari, 2021). For example, babies might eat different amounts, have other medical problems, or be handled by different nurses. To make the test fair, scientists will make sure all babies eat the same way, have similar medical conditions, and are cared for in the same way by trained staff.
There are other things that can make this test unfair, called threats to internal validity (Bhandari, 2021). If babies naturally gain weight as they grow, how do we know if kangaroo care really helped? Scientists will compare babies who get kangaroo care with those who don’t. To make sure no one picks babies unfairly, they will randomly choose which babies get kangaroo care and which stay in incubators. Nurses will use the same type of scale to measure weight so the numbers are accurate.
Another problem is external validity, which means ensuring the results apply to all babies, not just the ones in the study. The results might not work for other hospitals if the study is only done in one hospital. To fix this, scientists can do the test in different places. Parents and nurses might also act differently if they know they are being watched, so they will be trained to care for babies the same way they usually do.
To see if kangaroo care helps, scientists will track baby weights over several weeks. They will measure the weight every day or week to see if the babies who had skin-to-skin time gained more weight than those who didn’t. This way, they can know if kangaroo care is genuinely making a difference!
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