Week 1 is focused mainly on gathering a range of data on health habits (sleep, diet, exercise) and their psychological effects. The big job for students is to figure out what they’re going to measure and how.
Read more:
- Health Project Week 4
- Health Project Week 3
- Health Project Week 2
- Health Project Week 1
- Health Self-Experimentation Project Intro
- The Importance of Routine
Teachers: Feel free to adapt or amend any of this work in any way you like.
Week 1: Control Condition
By the end of this week, you need to have completed the following:
- Create a copy of student workbook online health project as a googledoc to keep track of your work.
- Read about the psychological benefits of sticking to good routines in this blog post.
- Reflect on what you have learned in the IB Psychology course by identifying one concept, summarizing it and explain how and/or why you think this might be useful for you in the future.
Reading
- Read this summary of a study that investigates the link between sleep and happiness.
- Write a summary of the conclusions of this study in your words.
- Evaluate the study by explaining some of the limitations of this study.
- HL Extension: Complete the practice Paper 3 questions that are at the bottom of the above blog post on sleep and happiness.
Data Collection
- Choose what health habits you want to study. Make a list of at least 3 habits you think might be affecting your health (see table below for examples).
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- You must study at least one habit from each general category (sleep, diet, exercise).
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- Create a data collection table. You are going to collect daily data on your own behaviour.
- Choose what your dependent variable is going to be (see below for examples).
- Create a second data collection table for your dependant variable. You could create your own general health and well-being questionnaire that covers multiple variables and gives you an overall score.
- Collect data every day for a minimum of 5 days this week.
| Example Independent Variables Related to Health Habits | Example Dependent Variables Related to Psychological Effects of Habits |
| Sleep (e.g. sleep/wake routine, average duration, sleep quality)Diet/Nutrition (e.g. servings of vegetables per day, grams of sugar per day, number of snacks, amount of coffee, etc.)
Exercise (e.g. mins per day exercising, number of steps in a day, ) Other (e.g. yoga, mindfulness) Tech (e.g. Time on social media, Time on phone, Screen time total, Time on Netflix, time on specific apps). |
See Mr Dixon’s examples below. |
Download a copy of the student workbook online health project
Teachers: Feel free to adapt or amend any of this work in any way you like.
Mr Dixon’s Data Collection Tables
First I made a plan of what I was going to measure:
Then I created the table:
I’m worried about my own screen time at the moment and I find it easier to remember to do this if it sits on my desk, so I am collecting my data by hand.
Or you could create them digitally.
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.