DOES EATING SUGAR MAKE KIDS HYPER?

Jaime & Casey

• Population- Local kids of Horsham (can also be a likely conclusion of most American kids)

• Experimental units- 90 kids ages 3-12 from Simmons Elementary

• Explanatory Variable- Amount of sugar given to kids (categorical)

• Response Variable- Hyperness of kids (not hyper, somewhat hyper, very hyper)(categorical)

• Treatments- high sugar chocolate bar, medium sugar candy bar, no sugar candy bar

• Measuring and comparing: the kid’s hyperactivity will be measured categorically and compared to their previous hyperactivity

the group of kids who are given chocolate with no sugar. This serves as a model to compare the hyperactivity of kids who did not receive sugar to the hyperactivity of the kids who did have sugar. It is possible that the kids would only become hyper because they were excited about receiving chocolate, so the placebo (control group in this experiment) is a standard to see how hyper the kids would most likely be without sugar.

Control Group

in this experiment randomization is used to ensure that kids with different personalities, reactions to sugar, and other factors/characteristic are included in the experiment and are administered different treatments. By getting a simple random sample and by running a completely randomized experiment, bias is prevented and the experiment becomes more accurate.

Randomization

this experiment is tested on 90 children to ensure that the results are accurate. If each treatment was only given to one child, then the results may only apply to those kids. However, by studying many kids, the experiment better represents the area’s population of kids and their reactions to sugar.

Replication

blocking will be used in this experiment to evaluate boys and girls separately. Boys and girls may have different reactions to consuming candy and sugar, which may be an important factor to note in this experiment. By blocking, the resulting responses are much easier to evaluate and compare.

Blocking

both the children who receive the treatments and those who are administering the treatments and evaluating the results will not know which kind of treatment is being given. The kids will not know the treatment they get in order to make sure they are not just believing they are more hyper, or that the kids get more excited because they love candy, which could make the results bias. The evaluators will not know the kids’ treatments either because they may be more likely to categorize the kids based on their treatments and not their levels of hyperactivity.

Double Blinding

Before choosing which children can be used in the study, we must screen them all. This is done so we can eliminate kids with any type of conditions different from the majority of kids, such as ADHD problems or diabetes. By eliminating these kids, we aim at finding the overall results of children in the population, not just a select few which could throw off results. In this screening we will eliminate kids with ADHD, diabetes, and other existing heart problems from the experiment in order to reduce the effect of any lurking variables that may occur.

Screening

ConcernsDoing this will not only eliminate bias since some kids are affected differently, but it will also eliminate some concerns. One concern would have been that we would not want a kid with ADHD getting overly excited to an unhealthy degree. Also, we would not want the kids with diabetes to have trouble balancing their blood sugar content. Other concerns just may be kids getting overly excited and accidentally injuring themselves in the process

EXPERIMENT- Pre-evalutation

Before the kids eat the candy, have them all play in a room together for an hour. Evaluators will sit in the room and categorize the hyperactivity and behavior of each of the kids and sort them into several categories: not hyper, somewhat hyper, moderately hyper, very hyper.

EXPERIMENT- random assignment

First, get 90 volunteers from Simmons Elementary between the ages of 3 and 12 years old. Block them into 45 boys and 45 girls. Give each boy and each girl a number between 1 and 45 by alphabetical order. Put the numbers in two hats (1 boy, 1 girl) and shake and shuffle the numbers. For the boys, pick the first 15 numbers and give them the high sugar treatment. Pick 15 more and they will receive the medium sugar treatment. Pick the last 15 to receive the no sugar treatment (the placebo). Do the same for the girls hat.

EXPERIMENT- running experiment

Give each of the kids the candy that corresponds with their treatment. After 10 minutes (allowing time for the sugar to kick in) place the kids back in a room together and reevaluate their hyperactivity levels using the same scale and same evaluators.

EXPERIMENT- evaluating results

Compare the hyperactivity levels from before the kids ate the candy and after. Then, reveal which treatments were given to each child and make observations about the connections and relationships between the candy and the hyperactivity level.

Conclusions• One could conclude that kids like the ones being

experimented on (perhaps children 3-12 of America) are either affected, causing them to be more hyper, or not affected by sugar if there seems to be no difference in hyperactivity

• However, whatever conclusion we get we must not conclude the same thing for all children (nor all children of the world) because although all children may be similar, factors such as living space and conditions and other such factors could affect the results