Implementation of Research

During the month of January, I filmed and surveyed 50 people in total. First, I had every person sign a consent form. After that, I filmed each participant for two minutes, and then gave him or her a survey which had nine questions. Each question presented one option with a definite outcome, and one option with a "risky" (uncertain) outcome. The questions were based on financial decisions.

Here's a question from the survey so you can see:

If you were faced with the following choice, which alternative would you choose?

_ A sure gain of $240

_ A 25 percent chance to gain $1000 and a 75 percent chance to gain nothing.

The people who chose the sure gain were deemed not risk takers, while those who decided to gamble were risky decision makers. 

While the participants were filling out the surveys, I watched the recorded video to count their blink rates. Once I was done watching the video, I deleted it to ensure confidentiality. I then wrote the number of blinks on the respective survey for future data analysis. 

Finding 50 people to participate was a bit of a challenge, but I was able to use anyone over the age of 18 for consent purposes. I used classmates and teachers at my school, but that did not amount to 50. The head of my school, Elizabeth McConaghy, sent out an email to all of the parents of students at my school asking for volunteers. A few people contacted me, and then I had 50 people. I met some people at the library, but most at school. I met with each person in a closed room with no distractions for a measure of control.

The implementation went really well, and I did not encounter anything that I didn't expect. The method I designed basically matched up perfectly with the reality of the experiment. 

The whole experience was really fun, and it reaffirmed my interest in conducting research in college and beyond. It was surprising how many people were (or at least seemed) interested in my research! I think that neuroscience and psychology interest everyone, on at least the most basic level, since they speak to who we fundamentally are. Talking with people made me realize that so many more people would be interested in studying science if the importance of the connection to themselves is clearly made. 

If I had the resources, I would use a lot of fancy equipment like fMRI and EEG to measure dopamine levels in the brain. Since I'm just a high school student, though, blink rate has been the easiest and best way to do this. If blink rate really does turn out to be a significant indicator of dopamine, this would be great for not only the scientific community, but for other places like rehabilitative services and maybe for practices of medicine. Blink rate could tell if someone is more impulsive, and if physicians or caretakers are able to see this in such a non-invasive manner, it would be much more useful when determining which treatments or medications should be prescribed.

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