Chapter 1. Do Speed Daters Become Pickier the Later It Gets?

These questions prompt us to develop a research study that examines the relationship between gender, time, and attractiveness during a heterosexual speed dating event. But first, you will need a framework to help you explore this topic. Research studies all start with a question, so here is your chance to ask one of your own.

Now that you have a research question (“How do gender and time of rating during a speed-dating event influence perceived attractiveness?”), you must decide which type of research design will best answer your research question. To narrow things down, consider the following:

• Nonexperimental Design

• Experimental Design

Having decided that your research question requires a comparison between groups, you must determine the best comparison to make. However, keep in mind that there are multiple comparisons to be made: between genders and times of rating.

Now that you have selected an experimental design that compares males’ and females’ ratings of perceived attractiveness at early, middle, and late points in the speed-dating event, you can identify your independent and dependent variables.

• Independent Variable (IV)

• Dependent Variable (DV)

In this study, participants can only be in 1 of the 2 groups for gender; they are either male or female. Thus, gender is a between-subjects variable.

• Between-subjects Design

However, time of rating is being measured as how the participants’ ratings change over time. This means each participant gives 3 ratings—early, midway, and late in the speed-dating event. Time of rating is a within-subjects variable.

• Within-subjects Design

With the research question (“How do gender and time of rating during a speed-dating event influence perceived attractiveness?”), comparisons, and types of variables in mind, consider the following designs:

• Repeated-measures Design

• Factorial Design

• Mixed Design

You have developed an experiment with 2 independent variables (gender and time of rating) and 1 dependent variable (perceived attractiveness). Because we have 1 between-subjects variable (gender) and 1 within-subjects variable (time of rating), we have a mixed design.

• Mixed Design

Now that you have determined what you will manipulate and measure, you must formulate an experimental hypothesis. Because we have multiple independent variables, we will also need multiple hypotheses: main effect hypotheses and interaction effect hypotheses.

• Main Effect Hypothesis

• Interaction Effect Hypothesis

Now that we have our main effect hypotheses, we must create the interaction effect hypothesis.

Before you can conduct your experiment, you need to determine exactly whom you want to study and where you can find this target sample.

Now that you have determined how you will collect your data and your intended sample, you must submit your research procedure to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for ethical approval. The IRB will determine whether or not your study meets all ethical guidelines.

• IRB

Each IRB has its own protocol that conforms to the national standard when a researcher submits an application for proposed research. In addition to the appropriate paperwork and other information submitted to the IRB, the board considers the following description during their evaluation of your proposed experiment:

• The purpose of this research is to determine whether there is an interaction effect of gender (males or females) and time of rating (early, middle, or late) on perceived attractiveness. To study this topic, participants who are registered for a local speed-dating event will be told upon arrival that a study is being conducted on the attractiveness of individuals who participate in speed-dating events. Participants will be asked to rate the attractiveness of the daters they have met thus far 15 minutes after the event starts (early), 1 hour after the event starts (middle), and at the end of the 2-hour event (late). Participants will be debriefed at the end of the event regarding the true nature of the study.

The IRB reviewed your submission and has 1 concern. Although the study appears to present less than minimal risk to participants, there is no mention of informed consent and voluntary participation.

You must now determine how to respond to the IRB, keeping in mind the ethics of respect for persons and autonomy.

Now that you have a sense of how to conduct this study, it is time to see what data from this study might look like.

If you were to run a full version of this study, you would want to have at least 30 participants in each between-subjects group (males and females). Because you have a within-subjects design, each participant will be exposed to all levels of the time of rating independent variable. Thus, we need 60 participants for our study.

Now that you have collected your data, you must determine the best way to summarize your findings. The decisions you made about how to collect your data dictate the statistics you can use with your data now. First, you need to consider if your study is descriptive or inferential.

• Descriptive

• Inferential

Now that you have worked with your data, you must determine the best way to express your findings in written form. You must be sure that how you describe your findings accurately represents the data.