Science Experiments

Question: What’s an “outline of my research method”?

My criteria sheet for a school project is asking me for a Step by step outline of my research method, method type, type of data used, how it was collected and list of equipment used.

Its a science project… A psychology one. I did an experiment on whether hyperativity is caused by sugar. I had to do research, and now I have to do a full Lab report.

Help?
Also, whats an independant, dependant and controlled variable?
And extraneous variable?

Answer: You would say,
I video taped and observed 40 children playing. After an hour I gave two cups of kool-aid to 20 kids with real sugar. I gave 20 kids kool aid with nutrisweet. I then observed their behavior for 1 hour afterwords. We then counted the number of times they hit each other or called each other names.

..ETC

In your example the independent variable is the sugar. The dependent variable is the children’s behavior or the hyperactivity you are looking for. In this expample you might say the children’s behavior is dependent on whether or not they got sugar. An extraneous variable would be something like it being close to bedtime or lunch. It is possible that there might have been outside factors that caused the hyperactivity.
Independent and dependent variables are important because you help identify the cause and effect relationship between two actions.

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