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VCE Science Research Methods Question Thread

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vox nihili:
After changes to the VCE study designs a couple of years ago, research methods are now central to all of the science curricula. Since the introduction of research methods, this has continued to be a challenging area of the course for science students.

This question thread is your opportunity to ask questions about research methods from any of the VCE sciences. From time to time, we will also post questions for you to answer that will illustrate the basic principles of research methods!

vox nihili:
Introduction to practice questions

From time to time moderators will post questions here for you to have a go at. The purpose of the questions is not to search for narrow definitions in research methods, but to encourage you to think more deeply about what good research looks like and where it might go wrong. A lot of what you learn at school is very much about the rote of research (how to write a poster, what an IV and DV are); however, questions on the exam expect you to be able to think about experiments critically. These questions aim to develop your skills in critical analysis of research.

Active participation is encouraged! We want to hear your ideas and hear you justify them. Once a good discussion has happened, we will add our own answers and give you some pointers about your own.

Practice question #1

Jerry, a researcher at the National University of Victoria, is really interested in pain. Even more than that, he's interested in making lots of money, so he sets out to design a pain drug and test it. Jerry sets about designing the drug and once he's done, he recruits 10,000 people to a study to test it. He splits the people into three different groups:

Group 1: 5mg of drug
Group 2: 10mg of drug
Group 3: 20 mg of drug

Each group is followed for six months and instructed to take the drug whenever they feel pain that they rate more than 5/10 on a severity scale. They are then asked to rate their pain at 30 minutes, 1 hour and 3 hours after taking the drug.

Once study is concluded, Jerry is very excited about the results! The results are summarised below by average reduction in pain score

Group 1
30min: 17%
1 hour: 20%
2 hours: 21%

Group 2
30 min: 24%
1 hour: 28%
2 hours: 30%

Group 3
30 min: 27%
1 hour: 31%
2 hours: 34%

Jerry then sets about selling his drug on the basis of these results, as he concludes that the drug is making a significant difference to people's pain scores.


QUESTIONS:

-Should the drug be sold? Why or why not?

DBA-144:
Are we allowed to ask further information? I have a pretty good idea of what I think, but I want to ask some more questions to get a better idea of how the research was conducted.


If we can, can you please answer these (sorry if I am taking this way too seriously, I have some time so I thought it would be good to participate in this):

1.What age groups were the participants and what was the selection process?
2. Was there any incentive for the participants to take part in the research? (eg. $$$, better grades for other uni students, etc.)
3. Did the drug have any side effects?

My thoughts:

There was no control group (i.e there was not a group that was given a placebo drug, for example) and there was also no indication, or from what I gather, there was no minimum level of pain for which participants were told to take the drug. Hence, those who took part in the study could have been taking the drug for minor headaches or for much worse cases of pain. This could have changed how they ranked their pain socre. For instance, the pain of a headache may subside after 3 hours or half an hour, depending on the person and severity, and it is likely participants take additional steps, other than taking the drug, to minimise their pain. These actions, depending on what they were, may have caused them to provide a lower pain score than if they only took the drug. This could indicate that the effects of the drug are minimal relative to other actions that participants might have taken.

More importantly, the results do not seem to suggest that any conclusions can actually be made about the research. Like I said earlier, there isn't a control group to compare results to, so we do not know what the actual effects of the drug are. Furthermore, the results simply show that after time, the pain score is reduced by a greater percentage- yet, changing the concentration of the drug seems to have a small, if any, influence on pain score reduction after the first 30 minutes. So, while this may suggest that higher concentrations of the drug cause greater pain score reduction earlier, this can also be because the person taking the drug feels that as there is more drug, they will get better sooner. IN this way, it seems likely that there is also a psychological effect of the drug.

Therefore, as the research has results which a) do not highlight what the effects of the drug are and b) by extension of point a), the results may be purely because of a placebo effect, then no conclusions that support the sale of the drug can be made and hence the drug should not be sold.

(Hopefully I didn't say anything too stupid :P)

vox nihili:

--- Quote from: DBA-144 on March 17, 2019, 01:56:59 pm ---snip

--- End quote ---

Will allow others to comment first before I make any substantive comments. To answer your questions:

1. Patients were referred by their doctors to the study. Any one over the age of eighteen was eligible for the study. The ages of the participants was balanced in the groups.
2. No.
3. All drugs have side effects

vox nihili:
Before I provide answers to the above, does anyone else want to have a crack?

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