Recording-2025-03-14T22:21:44.255Z

Experiment Overview

• Objective: Investigate if mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety in adults

• Key Question: Does mindfulness work to reduce anxiety?

Study Design

• Participants: 120 adults with anxiety disorder

  • Experimental Group (Group 1): 60 adults receiving mindfulness meditation treatment

  • Control Group (Group 2): 60 adults not receiving treatment (engaged in a relaxing reading task)

Variables

• Independent Variable: Intervention type

  • Mindfulness Meditation: Experimental group

  • Relaxing Reading Task: Control group

• Dependent Variable: Anxiety score

  • Measured at the end of the 6-week program using anxiety scans

Results Presentation

• Results are typically shown in a bar chart:

  • X-axis: Represents the two groups (Mindfulness group = Blue bar, Control group = Orange bar)

  • Y-axis: Anxiety scores (higher scores indicate more anxiety)

Tentative Conclusions

• Mindfulness intervention reports fewer anxiety symptoms compared to the control group

• Need to ensure no extraneous variables influence results for conclusions to be valid

Extraneous Variables

• Variables potentially influencing scores include age, gender, or prior meditation experience

Confounding Variables

• Occurs when two variables are linked, complicating specific effect analysis on the dependent variable

• Example: If the control group has more adults with severe anxiety, this could skew results

Solution to Variables

• Random Assignment: Participants randomly assigned to groups to mitigate bias from extraneous and confounding variables

  • Ensures equal chance of group placement, minimizing the risk of skewed results

Conclusion

• Mindfulness meditation appears to reduce anxiety levels in adults with anxiety disorders

• Further discussion on statistical analysis in the next video.