sugar and children

(How sugar affects attention in small children)
Experimental Method
 Hypothesis – The more sugar that a child consumes, the less attentive the child will be. If too much sugar is consumed the child may become very active for a short time then crash.
 Independent Variable – In safe dosses increase the amount of sugar the children consume in a given time period before having them take a short test to track their attention.
 Dependent Variable – Have each of the children take a short test to determine how their attention was affected with each dosage of sugar.
 Confounding Variable – List any and all affects that may not be a result of the sugar consumption.
Survey Method
 Random Sample – Allow at random a few different children from the population of children to take part in the survey. If you must recruit children for the survey then do it in a manner that will get an average of the complete population of children. Such as selecting a child from every five children alphabetically.
 Biasing – Avoid asking questions that forces the children to fit your preconceived notion or interpretation. Do not use questions such as: Do you not feel that too much sugar causes you to lose concentration or your attention when taking a test. Instead reword it like this: How do you feel that the consumption of sugar affects your attention when taking a test. Set up questions to obtain the child’s grade and their preferences of sweets like how many and what product they consume.
Compare and Contrast Both Methods offer valuable insight to our original question. Survey Method will allow you to effectively gain data at a much faster pace. Experimental Method allows for a controlled environment and establishes a cause and effect from your experiment. While the Survey Method is a very fast way to gain insight, it is sometimes hard to refrain from showing bias in your questioning especially if an outcome is already interpreted. It is also hard to guarantee a true average of the total population of children when doing the Survey Method. In my opinion the Experimental Method is clearly the better choice for it establishes the extent of which sugar consumption affects the child’s attention and is done in a controlled environment.