stat paper

1.

One of my bad habits definitely has to be checking my email too often. I started developing this habit a while back but it has picked up recently as I am going through the process of searching for a job. Consequently, I have been constantly checking my email in hopes of a favorable response from a potential employer.

After doing a search on Purdue's Library homepage, I came across an article that was published by the New York Times on January 9 2015 titled "Stop Checking Email So Often". I believe that this article is a secondary source as it was published in a newspaper and is written in a much less technical voice that is easy to understand from by a general audience. Furthermore, it does not follow a format of articles published in journals. However, this article is unique as it is actually written by the researchers themselves.

The researchers designed an exploratory two-week experiment that intended to determine whether the frequency with which you check your email played a role in causing stress. They recruited a group of participants and randomly divided them into two groups that could either check their email an unlimited amount of times or were limited. The participants would switch positions after one week. The participants were given questionnaires daily, weekly and during an important activity that were from previous studies linking emails to stress to determine how stressed they were. The researchers also captured other metrics such as mindfulness, perceived sleep quality and self-reported productivity. This study found that during the limited email use week, participants experienced significantly lower daily stress than during the unlimited email use week. The study also found that lower stress predicted higher well-being on a diverse range of well-being outcomes.

The research project in this article was an experiment as the authors explicitly stated that they designed an experiment. The researchers designed a two-week experiment where they randomly split the research participants into two groups: one that maximized their frequency of checking their email for week and one that minimized their frequency of checking their email for a week. Both groups of participants swapped positions after one week.

The authors of the research project recruited 142 adults from a university community to participate in this research through posters in community centers, paid advertisements in local newspapers, listservs and snowball sampling. Participants of this research had a chance to win $150 and received feedback about their well-being during the study. The research advertised the study as suitable for people who got a lot of email and felt overwhelmed by it sometimes. 18 people dropped out of the study leaving only 124 people who actually participated in the research. The sample was therefore, a voluntary response. About 55% of the participants were Caucasian and about 28% of the sample were Asian. About two-thirds of the sample identified as either undergraduates or graduate students and the remaining third of the participants were community members who came from various industries.

In order to show causation, a carefully controlled experiment and a strong association is needed. Additionally, the association has to be consistent and the alleged cause precedes the effect and must be plausible. I believe that the research which was an experiment, showed causation as the ANOVA tests indicated that stress was the only outcome variable that was consistently and directly influenced by the researchers manipulation (limiting the frequency that a participant can check their email).

One extension of the research into my habit that I would like to see has to do with the device with which I check my email and how it affects my frequency of checking my email. I would like to know whether using a particular device could make you more or less stressed as well as make me check my email more often.

After reading the article, I do not plan on continuing my habit of checking my email frequently. The research found that people feel less stressed when they checked their email less often. Therefore, I may feel less stressed if I checked my email less often. Feeling less stressed is also likely to increase my well-being in many other areas. Hence, I am likely to experience better well-being outcomes by checking my email less frequently.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunda...r=0 less

2.

Chewing gum has been my good habit, since my early childhood. Chewing gum is a soft and cohesive substance has been used by humans for quite a long time; it was originally made of natural latex and chicle. The habit has several positive effects, such as relieving stress and health benefits. Those who take much of their time chewing gum reduce the effects of stress and health problems, such as high blood pressure. Smith, 2013) I am including the links to both the primary source and secondary source used in this study.

1) http://www.confectionerynews.com/R-D/Chewing-gu...

2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22496105

In this study, a web-based questionnaire was applied, where gum chewing was measured using a 7 point scale; never, occasionally, once a month, once a week 5 or more times a week, once a day and more than once a day (Smith, 2013). The perceived stress at work was measured using a five-point scale that ranged from, not at all to extremely stress up. A 14item anxiety scale was used to measure depression and anxiety. A yes/no response was given by whether the patients have ever seen a doctor concerning high blood pressure (Smith, 2013).

The study revealed that the chewing frequency will have a significant linear effect on the occupational stress and cholesterol scores. The chewing of gum was associated with the significant reduction in stress and a reduced amount of cholesterol in the body thus leading to a decrease in high blood pressure. The subjects filled the questionnaires online, and their responses were received and analyzed. The study can be classified as an observational study, since it involves a use of a sample of the population to complete the survey and infer to the main population.

The study used a sample of volunteers of 338 workers, picked from the public sector and aged from 17-64 years old. They completed the questionnaires after they had an informed consent of the study and agreed to share confidential information. The researcher selected the sample purposively, based on the job lifestyle and health.

The researcher showed causation, since, during the study, he/she tried to establish the effect of chewing gum on the stress and health of the subjects. In the analysis, the study depicted that the researcher developed a significant linear relationship that implied causation in the study between stress and chewing gum. The study further reveals a significant logistic regression model that showed much causation.

The study extended its clear explanations of the effects of chewing gum where it was stated that it causes a reduction in stress level at work. Also, it reduced the level of cholesterol in the body thus reducing high blood pressure in humans. Following these key findings of the research, my habit is deduced to be good, as it was statistically established that helps reduce stress and cholesterol that are both harmful to my body. As the study suggest the chewing of gum helps to reduce occupational stress and cholesterol levels. On the other hand, it has some side effects though they do not outweigh its advantages. In this regard, I will be chewing whenever doing work and once during my leisure time. Though this current chewing more frequent as compared from before.

The study is sparingly biased, especially in data collection where questionnaires were used in collecting data. The study mostly depended on the memory of the responded, thus answering the scales like the chewing gum frequency scale might lead to approximations thus creating bias. The personal questions like health questions the respondent may lie for his/her conscious public interest no matter how he/she might be explained to that the response is confidential. The study’s ability to select sample may be biased since the researcher knew that the target was purposive sampling, which is not probabilistic and is subject to bias. The study should have included variable like alertness in a job and emotional regulation when chewing gum. The research was good except on the sampling procedure, to avoid many biases the study should have used probabilistic sampling procedures like simple random sampling or stratified sampling that could have reduced its level of bias.

The main responses in my article are the level of stress, presence of high blood pressure. All this response variables in the study are categorical in that the responses are categorized in their respective scales used in the questionnaires.

There were no graphs used. However, there should be the use of bar graphs or pie charts in showing the results of individual categorical variables scale response. For instance in the scale of chewing gum it could show the percentage who chewed more than once in a day all through the elements of the scale.

The study is not an experiment but a survey. However in the study the principle of ethics has been highly observed by informing the participants fully. I would use a different sampling technique to avoid bias and change the whole study to experimental. Here I could observe the individuals chewing gum for a long period. The study could have easily been turned into an experimental design by controlling individuals who are not chewing gum and thus compare them to the group that is constantly chewing gum.

References

1. Smith, A. (2013). Effects of Chewing Gum on Stress and on Health: A Replication and Investigation of Dose-Response. Stress & Health: Journal Of The International Society For The Investigation Of Stress, 29(2), 172-174.

2. Effects of chewing on stress and health,