writing assignment
1. Who is/are the author(s) of this article?
· McKenzie Griffin, Heloisa Cursi Campos, Irina Khramtsova, Amy R. Pearce
2. What is the title of the article?
· Stress and Anxiety Reduction in College Students through Biofeedback
3. What year was this article published?
· 2020
4. What are the 2-3 main things you learned from the introduction?
· Stress and anxiety are within the top five health concerns for college students which lead to mental, emotional, and academic struggles.
· When college students practice mindfulness, it increases levels of coping ability, and it also decreases anxiety levels when paired with meditation.
5. What is one of the articles cited in the introduction? (Refer to it by the authors & the year it was published.)
· Wyner, D. (2015).
6. What is the hypothesis?
· Levels of stress and anxiety would be lower and coping ability levels higher during periods of biofeedback intervention
7. How many participants were in the study?
· Originally 7 but dropped to 4
8. Who were the participants (e.g., college students, infants, etc)?
· Students aged 18-29
9. Were the participants compensated for their participation?
· Not that I saw
10. What was/were the independent variable(s)?
· Periods in where they received intervention or not.
· The biofeedback they used
11. How many levels of the independent variable(s) were there?
· 4 levels
· 2 levels
12. What were the levels of the IV(s)? That is, what groups were people divided into?
· week 1 intervention week 2 no intervention week 3 intervention week 4 intervention
· if they used the device or not
13. What was the dependent variable?
· Stress and anxiety levels
· Coping method levels
14. What materials were used in the study? Did participants complete a survey, use a computer program, were they interviewed, etc?
· The HeartMath Inner Balance Lightning earlobe sensor, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Coping Self-Efficacy scale (CSE), Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-tem scale (GAD-7), iPhone, log sheets
15. Summarize what the participants did.
· Participants were asked to use the device for the first phase of the study and take the same three assessments at the end of that period. In the second phase, the participants didn’t use the device and again completed the assessments. This pattern happened one more time and they took the assessment a final time. Participants returned logs and were provided with new ones each time.
16. What type of research method was used? That is, was it an experiment, a correlational study, an observational study or a case study?
· Repeated measures experiment
17. How was the data analyzed (that is, what statistical analysis was used)?
· They collected the scores on the three scales over the course of the study and compiling the data into individual graphs for each participant
18. Did the author(s) find a significant effect?
· They saw that their anxiety and stress levels decreased significantly and better able to monitor their stress
19. What did you learn from the figure (graph) in the results section?
· Stress and anxiety levels decreased while coping abilities increased
20. Was the hypothesis supported?
· Yes, because the assessment scores showed stress and anxiety levels were lower during phases when biofeedback was provided, but it was deemed a substantial commitment due to the difficulty of the participants and researchers to stay in contact which led to having some incomplete data.
21. Are there any ethical issues with this study? If so, what are they?
· They only had one biofeedback monitor for the second study that they all had to share, and they had to make an appointment in order to use it, possibly increasing the levels of stress
22. What can you conclude from this study?
· That biofeedback is a productive tool in lowering people’s stress and anxiety levels
23. Did the author(s) make any suggestions for further investigation? If so, what suggestion was made?
· Have a better means of communication from researcher to participant, having them keep the monitor, more participants, pay participants
24. How many references were cited in this article?
· 18
25. What did you think of the article?
· The article was interesting. It’s important to recognize the amount of stress and anxiety college students go through
26. Was it an effective study? Do you accept the results? Why or why not?
· I feel as though this was an effective study. I think it’s important to focus on people’s mental health and how to try and help deal with it, the results are there to prove it.