Does watching (some category of media) increase (identifiable harm) to (an othered
group)? You chose what media, type of impact, and impacted group that you want to study.
Example: Does watching hypermasculine hero characters increase aggression to women (or gays, or
minorities)?
Requirements: You will need to:
select 10 individuals and either randomly assign them to a control or an experimental group. For within group
design vary the order of the tasks for all 10 subjects.
Select a category of media — action shows (often have hypermasculine heros), news shows (but the stories
would need to feature hypermasculine men), sit-coms (often contain emotional violence), reality shows (often
contain a lot of bitchiness).
Develop treatment material and control material. (Remember the control should be as identical as possible to
the treatment material WITHOUT the independent aspect you are testing for.)
Develop the testing instrument that can detect any change produced by treatment.
Example: If I was doing an experiment to find out if high-salt intake increased blood pressure, then I could
design the experiment to give half of the subjects
high salt burgers (experimental treatment)
and half no salt burgers (control treatment)
and test for changes in blood pressure with a blood pressure monitor (testing instrument)
to obtain a quantitative measure of change (the blood pressure number).
Basic structure of essay:
Sample Solution
