You will need to read passages of this article multiple times to fully understand it. Though the PDF is 6 pages, you should allow yourself much more time than you might think to do this assignment. Academic writing is dense and precise. Be sure to look up words you don’t recognize and challenge yourself to understand everything you’ve read before moving too far ahead. Writing notes or “translations” of the main points of each paragraph is a good way to start if you’re feeling very stuck.
Finally, you will need your notes and reading from week 2 / chapter 2 to do this assignment correctly. Refer to those notes often!
Here are the questions you’ll be answering as you read.
- What is/are the Independent Variable(s) of this study? Use the exact terminology of the article.
- What is/are the Dependent Variable(s) of this study? Use the exact terminology of the article.
- What is the hypothesis of the experiment conducted in this article?
- What is one piece of evidence the authors use to support their hypothesis (you will find the evidence in the introduction)?
- How many participants were recruited that completed the entire study?
- Did this study have a control group? How was the effect of order of presentation addressed?
- Was there an effect due to the order of presentation? How do the authors know?
- What were the operational definitions of each dependent variable?
- What were the findings of the study? What happened to ghrelin levels over time for those who thought they were drinking the sensi-shake? The indulgent shake?
- Based on the findings of this paper, what’s one recommendation you might make to friend who was trying to overeat less frequently?
