Research Question:
One of the main goals of ZAP is to prevent adolescent bullying. Our objective is to see if ZAP is successful in their goal. We will do this by creating a plan that answers the question, does ZAP decrease the amount of bullying committed by the adolescents in the program?
Methods:
The independent variable is the ZAP program. We will not measure the independent variable because we are measuring how the dependent variable responds to it. The dependent variable is the amount of bullying that is committed by the adolescents. The dependent variable will be measured using an aggression scale developed by Pamela K. Orpinas of the University of Georgia. The aggression scale has eleven questions that has ratings of 0 to 6 or more depending on the adolescents answers. The questions are about how many times the adolescent committed an act like teasing, hitting, or encouraging …show more content…
These are factors that could play a role in the measures. For example, older adolescents may act out more physically then younger adolescents in ZAP who may tease others more.
Design:
Since we are looking to see if the amount of bullying is decreased because of ZAP, we need to know what rate the adolescents were bullying at before the program so we can have a baseline. We also have a small group so we will only be able to do a single group design. The design we will use is a one-group pretest-posttest design. This design will allow us to compare the baseline score with the score of the survey the adolescent will take after the program.
There is no control group and it is a nonexperimental design which means the score of the posttest is not a full result of ZAP. The measurements we do receive will hopefully be indicative of some change, whether that change is in line with the goals of ZAP, we will find out.
Sampling