1) First, identify a psychological topic that is interesting. Then Name and describe the general construct below.

2. Next, please find me a specific research question about that topic. This can be any question that you can find about that construct!

3. What are the independent and dependent variables for the research question?

4. How will you measure both your independent and dependent variable? Please describe a proposed measure for each below.

5. Is your independent variable measured or manipulated?

6. Is your research design correlational or experimental?

7. What type of claim will you make after all data is collected, given your research design?

8. Which types of validity do you need to be concerned with, given your research design?

9. What statistical test might you use to analyze your data? Why is that test appropriate?

10. What would be your null hypothesis? What would be your alternative hypothesis?

11. Finally, what results do you expect to get? (Do you expect to reject or retain your null hypothesis?)

1. First, identify a psychological topic that is interesting. Then Name and describe the general construct below.

Sleep Quality, Stress, and Eating Disorders: A Correlational Study

A study by Sofia Vallejo of Brigham Young University, 2015

Abstract of the Study:

• Introduction: Eating disorder is one of the major concerns in our society that is prevalent nowadays. This concern should be given immediate action for the physical and psychological effect this have on the patients' health. Considering sleep and stress as two majors that can be related to the imbalanced in eating patterns. According to Gonnissen et al.(2000), sleep can affect eating patterns and is involved in energy balance regulation. Studies also show how stress influences poor sleeping patterns that leads to extreme eating patterns. Carvalho Bos et al. (2013) explained that the amount of sleep affects eating and eating related disorder can affect the quality of sleep.
• Methodology: The study recruited 60 women through social media application, Facebook and byu.edu.email. The age of the participants is between 18-40 years old. Surveys like Short Form Perceived Stress Scale, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Disordered Eating Attitude Scale were provided to collect additional necessary information about the subjects and to measure stress, sleep quality, and eating behaviors, respectively. 
• Findings: The results of the study shows that the relationship between stress and eating disorder was significant, meaning that an increase in stress was significantly correlated with an increase in eating disorders. However, higher levels of sleep quality were not significantly correlated with high levels of eating disorders. Given the findings above, the researchers reject the hypothesis that stress mediated the correlation between sleep quality and eating disorders. The study concludes that levels of stress independently affect eating disorders and no mediator was found between the variables.
• Conclusion: Based on previous studies, there is no correlation between eating disorders, sleep pattern and stress levels. However, the results of this study found that sleep quality and eating disorders are not correlated while stress level is highly correlated with eating disorders. These means that the findings do not support the hypothesis because no mediator among stress, eating disorders, and quality of sleep was found.

2. Next, please find me a specific research question about that topic. This can be any question that you can find about that construct!

• The study seeks to answer if if there are correlations between the variables of sleep quality, stress, and eating behaviors.

3. What are the independent and dependent variables for the research question?

• The independent variables are stress levels and sleep quality/disturbances.
• The dependent variable is the eating behavior.

4. How will you measure both your independent and dependent variable? Please describe a proposed measure for each below.

• For the independent variables: (1) stress level- Short Form Perceived Stress Scale was used. It consists of a 14-item Likert scale with five subcategories: "never," "almost never," "sometimes," "fairly often," and "very often." Seven items were reverse scored. (2) sleep quality - participants completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index online. This test measured their sleep quality for the last month. The format of the survey consisted of 22 fill-in-the-blank, forced-choice, and Likert scale questions.
• For the dependent variable: eating behavior -  Disordered Eating Attitude Scale was used. It is a 25 item scale divided into two parts. Part one consisted of a selected-response and forced-choice questions, whereas part two was based on five-level Likert scales. Moreover, this test evaluated five subareas that constituted disordered eating. These areas were relationship with food, concerns about food and weight gain, restrictive and compensatory eating practices, feelings towards eating, and idea of normal eating.

5. Is your independent variable measured or manipulated?

• This is a correlational study so the independent variables which are stress levels and sleep quality were measured and not manipulated.

6. Is your research design correlational or experimental?

• The study used correlational design, specifically the survey method which aims to understand the relationship of stress and sleep quality over disordered eating behaviors, with one dependent variable and two independent variables.

7. What type of claim will you make after all data is collected, given your research

design?

• After collecting all the necessary data, the study claims that stress mediates sleep quality and eating behaviors.

8. Which types of validity do you need to be concerned with, given your research design?

• The major concern of this research design is it does not claim to have good external validity. The sample used was a convenience sample; hence, it does not successfully represent the entire population of women. Moreover, it did not account for sleep duration, which may explain the lack of significance between sleep and eating disorders.
•  The use of Latin Square Design may increase the internal validity of the test but internal validity may also be decreased because this study does not account for other possible confounds that may affect the results.
• This present study claims that it has good construct validity because it used three tests to measure the variables. Construct validity evaluates whether a measurement tool really represents the thing the researchers are interested in measuring.

9. What statistical test might you use to analyze your data? Why is that test appropriate?

• The study used multiple regression as statistical test to analyze the collected data.
• The test was appropriate because the purpose was to find correlations between the variables of sleep quality, stress, and eating behaviors.

10. What would be your null hypothesis? What would be your alternative hypothesis?

• Null hypothesis: There is no correlation between eating disorders, stress levels and sleep quality.
• Alternative Hypothesis: There is a correlation between eating disorders, stress levels and sleep quality.

11. Finally, what results do you expect to get? (Do you expect to reject or retain your null hypothesis?)

• The purpose of the study is know whether the present research replicates the results found in previous studies. It is expected that the null hypothesis will be rejected. The study revealed that eating disorders presented a significant relationship with stress levels, meaning that higher levels of eating disorders correlated significantly with higher levels of stress. However, sleep quality and eating disorders did not correlate with each other.