Daniel Bouros – dbouro2

STEP 1
The experiment that is going to be performed on the islanders will measure the cognitive
abilities of each member after been exposed to a specific treatment factor. The specific treatment
factor is exposing each islander to 40% oxygen for a duration of 10 minutes. The task that will
produce a numeric result and serve as a response variable is going to be “The Memory Test
Cards”.
STEP 2
What effect does exposure to 40% oxygen air for ten minutes have on the memorization
ability of high school students year seven to eleven?
STEP 3
The population that will participate in the experiment are high school students randomly
selected form each of the three islands based on their school year.
STEP 4
1. Count each of the three islands cities clockwise and assign the correspondent number.
2. Using Excel function to generate two numbers that are in the range of the number of
villages on each island.
3. Select the school from the selected villages on each island and separate each class year in
different groups (group 1- year 7, group 2.- year 8 … group 5- year 11).
4. Group all the students that study in the same year regardless of island, gender, age.
5. Divide each group in two subcategories, first boys and second girls.
6. Insert all the names on a data sheet in separate column for boys and separate column for
girls.
7. Using Excel function generate eight numbers that are in the range of students number that
are part of the specific subcategory of the class year.
8. Use first four generated numbers to extract participants from the girls column.
9. Use last four generated numbers to extract participants from the boys column.
10. Step eight and nine must be repeated for each individual year (seven, eight, nine, ten and
eleven).
STEP 5
The Randomized Control Trial will be used as the experimental design for our research. The
experiment will be carried out by following steps. First, we divide high school students based on
their year (year seven to eleven) into five individual groups regardless of age, sex or island. Each
individual group is divided in girls and boys subgroups. Second, using excel randbetween function
we generate eight number form which first four will be used to extract girls participant from each
year group and four to extract boys from each participant group.
 Each participant will have following tasks:
1. look at 10 cards drawn from a standard 52- card deck for two minutes and then writing down
all the cards he can remember in one minute.
2. wait 30 min in the designated area.
3. put the mask with 40% oxygen on the face and breath for exactly ten minutes
4. repeat step number one with the same consecutively.
5. last person in each girls and boys group will perform a placebo treatment by breathing
regular room air.
STEP 6
Instrumentation is one of the most important internal validity threat because people usually
memorize thinks differently, however we choose a very known instrument such as deck of cards
which most of the people are familiar.
Group selection represents the second most important internal validity thread because we may
have a bias towards the older students since their cognitive abilities are more developed.
Attrition is also a important internal validity thread since participants may feel that they got a
low score on the first part of experiment and they want to drop out, however in order to minimize
this thread each participant will perform the experiment individually and the score will not be
revealed to him.
Test familiarity may also be a internal validity thread since some of our participants may be
poker players, therefore they are more comfortable memorizing cards than other participants.
STEP 7
Setting is the biggest external validity threat because students study in different schools,
therefore they have different academic experiences also we have students that have different levels
of wealth. However, we specifically choose the memory card test because regardless of academic
level and wealth most students are familiar with the cards at a certain extend.
Participant selection is the second most important external validity threat because even the
selection process is performed using absolute random generated numbers we do not know if
participants have the same routine (ex. someone may smoke and has less oxygen in his/her blood).
Therefore, we cannot agree 100% that our group represent the population at large.
 NAME VILLAGE HOUSHOLD_ NUMBER GENDER AGE MARITAL_STATUS NUMBER_CHILDREN OCUPPATION MTC SCORE BEFORE OXYGEN MTC SCORE AFTER OXYGEN
Jacob McCarthy Helvig 7 Male 15 Single 0 Student 8\10 7\10
Gala Carlsen Helvig 5 Female 16 Single 0 Student 8\10 7\10
Alexander Lund Nelson 3 Male 16 single 0 Student 7\10 5\10
Kelly Kimura Nelson 4 Female 16 Single 0 Student 9\10 10\10
Sarah Edwards Riroua 5 Female 15 Single 0 Student 8\10 10\10
Hans Solberg Riroua 6 Male 16 Single 0 Student 3\10 4\10