Caffeine Study Habits

After reviewing the National Undergraduate Research Clearinghouse website, I decided to chose an experiment focusing on the relationship between caffeine consumption and study habits. In this particular experiment, there were 79 people participating, of the 79 participants, 20 were male and 59 were female. All of the participants were undergraduate college students who studied at Loyola University New Orleans. They each completed surveys regarding their caffeine consumption levels and their study habits, included in this was their anxiety level. The hypothesis of this experiment was that high levels of caffeine consumption would result in unhealthy study habits. In this experiment, the independent variable is whether or not the participant consumed caffeine. If they did consume, how much caffeine they consumed during a study session. The experiment explains that this would be measured in 8oz. or 12oz. The dependent variable in this experiment are the participants study habits, which is explained as healthy or unhealthy (Pham, 2000). I believe there are some nuisance and extraneous variables in this experiment. A nuisance variable I noticed is that the participants could have varying IQ scores. Participants with higher IQ scores may have less text anxiety and do better on their test regardless of the amount of study time
For the independent variable, which is whether the participant consumed caffeine or not, and if so how much. They made sure to use a measurement of either 8oz or 12oz for their caffeine consumption. The dependent variable is the participants study habits, rated healthy or unhealthy. They also define unhealthy as procrastinating, minimal studying time, higher levels of anxiety, and less information retained from studying. They did not manipulate any variables, and stated so in the description of the experiment (Pham,