PSYC1032 - Report Writing - Comparison Control Mini Intervention Condition - Nursing Assignment Help

Assignment Task -           

Participants

Participants were 190 undergraduate students from the Australian College of Applied Psychology (ACAP). All participants were required to be over 18 years of age and participated voluntarily as part of their studies. Failure to participate did not impact the participants’ progression in the unit of study. The age and gender of participants were not recorded to ensure anonymity of participation within a required unit of study. 

Materials

The primary task in this experiment was modelled on the original Stroop Task (Stroop, 1935). The digital Stroop Task was presented via PsyToolkit, an online experiment presentation platform (Stoet, 2010; 2017). The stimuli were the words RED, GREEN, YELLOW and BLUE, presented in the congruent coloured ink (Congruent Trials) or incongruent coloured ink (Incongruent Trials). The words were presented in the centre of the screen on a black background and remained on the screen until the participant responded, with a maximum timeout of 3000ms. 

A five-minute Mindfulness Meditation recording from Stop, Breathe and Think was used as the five-minute experimental Mini-Intervention condition. The comparison control Mini-Intervention condition involved watching an approximately four and a half minute long motivational speech, which did not induce mindfulness but approximated the same audio-visual environment as the other Mini-Intervention condition. 

To control for previous mindfulness-based practice, participants completed the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003). This 15-item scale assessed trait mindfulness and the general tendency to show receptive attention to events happening in the moment. 

Procedure

Participants were instructed to access the Qualtrics survey link via the PSYC1032/5152 class spaces. Instructions were given to each class verbally and in text format. After reading through the instructions, participants completed the Mini-Intervention Phase. Assignment to Mindfulness or Control interventions was made randomly at the class level, with six classes completing the mindfulness activity and six completing the control activity. Participants in the Mindfulness Condition were asked to sit quietly with eyes closed and arms relaxed, and follow along with the instructions on the Mindfulness Meditation Recording, which was listened to using personal headphones.  Participants in the Control condition were also asked sit quietly, with eyes open, and listen to the motivational speech using personal headphones.

On completion of the Mini-Interventions, all participants commenced the Stroop Task. The task began with instructions on how to respond, with participants asked to respond to the COLOUR that the word was printed in. For example if the word RED appeared (in green ink), the participant should respond GREEN. Participants responded in each trial by using the computer keyboard and pressing “R” to indicate red ink, “G” to indicate green ink , “Y” to indicate yellow ink and “B” to indicate blue ink. The time taken to respond to each item and the accuracy of response was recorded. Feedback on task accuracy was given continuously throughout the task.

A total of 80 trials were conducted (40 per congruency condition) in a completely randomised order. At the completion of the experiment, participants were provided with three scores (Congruent RT, Incongruent RT, and Stroop Interference) which they were to enter into the qualtrics survey. All participants then completed the MAAS to conclude the experiment. 

Participants were debriefed as to the purpose of the study immediately after the experiment was completed. Copies of all materials were provided to students to allow for experiencing the Mini-Interventions given to both groups. Note that due to time constraints, a ‘pre-test’ baseline of Stroop performance was not collected. Rather, given the random assignment of students to groups, the differences in post-intervention scores on Stroop Interference were taken to reflect change due to the effects (or not) of mindfulness training. 

Results

Data analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics Package (version 25.0). After correcting for missing, incomplete, or incorrect data, the responses of 154 participants (n Control = 66, n Mindfulness = 88) were retained for further analysis. 

A measure of Stroop Interference (the amount by which a participant’s response time was interrupted by the presence of an incongruent colour/word pairing) was calculated by subtracting the average reaction time for Congruent trials from the average reaction time for Incongruent trials for each participant. That is, Stroop Interference was equal to Average Incongruent Reaction Time minus Average Congruent Reaction Time. Each participant’s Stroop Interference score was obtained and the average Stroop Interference score for each of the two Mini-Intervention Conditions, across all participants, was calculated. 

Initial descriptive analyses (as shown in Figure 1) revealed that mean Stroop Interference in the Mindfulness Meditation Condition (M = 83.71, SD = 141.52) was less than mean Stroop Interference in the Control Condition (M = 92.94, SD = 101.25). However, inferential statistical analysis using an independent samples t-test did not show a statistically significant difference between the means for the two groups (t(152) = -.449, p > .05). This suggests that participants in the Mindfulness Meditation Condition did not perform differently to participants in the Control Condition. 

Analysis of the MAAS survey further showed that there was no difference in trait mindfulness skills for participants in the Mindfulness Meditation Condition (M = 55.99, SD = 11.82), compared to the participants in the Control Condition (M = 56.47, SD = 10.55). As shown in Figure 2, there was no correlation between Stroop Interference Scores and MAAS scores (r = -0.043, p = .61). This indicates that baseline mindfulness traits do not affect Stroop Interference scores. 

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