Help Needed

Responded to classmate’s with substantive post

To begin, I would use the non-equivalent control group design which Cozby (2009) defines as; “employs a separate control group, but the participants in the two conditions-the experimental group and the control group-are not equivalent”. (p.212) I would use this design because I would be dealing with one group whom is put in a music therapy program versus a group who may get their depression handled with medication. I would first make sure that the participants I am using are of sound mind and have no life threatening illness which may cause more harm while participating with us. Secondly, I would make sure that I get consent forms from all legal guardians so that they cannot sue or blame us for something that had nothing to do with our experiment. I would then get two lead administers to monitor the groups and document each week for six weeks. I would also make sure that the medical staff is always present within our sessions in case someone falls ill or if they are having a medical emergency. Next, I would ask the experiment administers to watch their group’s response to their treatment method and note any aggravation, forgetfulness, happiness, motivation and other positive reactions versus the negative responses. At the end I would look over the results and determine if the music treatment was more effective and present the findings to the nursing homes in order to better assist their residents. 

Cozby, P.C. (2009), Methods in Behavioral Research 10th Edition

After looking through the various designs I feel that a nonequivalent pretest-posttest would be a good one to go with. I feel there should be a control group and non control group as well as testing before to see what results and levels of depression are before introducing the music therapy. Once the music therapy is added, then obviously those results will change, it is just a matter of how much and to what extent. I was not able to get my graph made for this post. I could not figure out how to change numbers and add them with a bar graph. Ultimately I am not any good with graphs, or numbers. For me, the designs that should be used should include a before and after, control group and non control group. I really don't see how you would get a good comparison any other way. I suppose a series could be done over time, to see how a group is affected over a period of time by the music therapy. Although I still feel having a pretest beforehand would be beneficial.

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