Erika N. answered • 02/13/20
My name is Erika and I am passionate about biology education!
1) Pick eating disorder most interested in exploring and provide short and simple definition of what you are exploring (backed with citation). For instance, let us say orthorexia (when one eats foods that makes he or she feel like being healthy, but this can lead to overeating).
2) Decide on what the purpose of the study will be: what are you interested in exploring? What adds to the current literature on eating disorders particularly pertaining to orthorexia? Let us say that you are not only interested in orthorexia but you are specifically interested in how much one actually eats foods that are considered healthy and one's perception of being healthy (use survey to measure).
3) Independent variable in this case: what can be measured, and altered/manipulated if doing an experiment. In this case the healthy food one is eating can be the IV. In this case not doing an experiment but can see if frequency of eating healthy food and perception are correlated in some manner.
4) Dependent variable in this case: what can also be measured, what would specifically be measured after an intervention or experiment. In this case the DV could be one's perception of being healthy.
5) Method & Stats: Collect survey information on not only what the participants (participants identifying with orthorexia) are eating, but the frequency of eating. First classify what you consider to be healthy backed by research/empirical evidence. Also, collect information on one's perception of being healthy or not. Use correlation (see if IV increases, does DV also increase, etc.)
6) Think of what findings could mean: Let us say for majority of the participants who identify with orthorexia, the frequency of eating healthy food increased, and the perception of being healthy also increased. This could suggest that even though these participants are eating a lot of healthy food, they actually think this is healthy even though the frequency of food they are consuming could be problematic since weight could be negatively impacted.
