Designing a Study to Investigate the Effectiveness of Praying and Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP)

Issue 1: Is praying effective?

This week’s task will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of the concepts you have read about this week. Provided below are two hypothetical issues that require your review. After your review, design a mock study to address each issue. 

Issue 1: Is praying effective? People tend to pray for people for several reasons, and one of them is that they hope that their prayers will influence various outcomes. For example, athletes often pray before games they play. Using the example of athletes praying before a game, design a study to test the effectiveness of praying. 

Issue 2: Do people have extra-sensory perception (ESP)? The concept of ESP is that some people can detect information they should not know. For example, some people say they can see a picture in another room and describe the details without having to be in that room. Design a study that tests whether someone has ESP. 

Note: Although these examples may appear unusual, there are many studies (mostly experiments) that have examined both issues in considerable detail. Feel free to access some of these studies to help you create your study. 

In both study designs, you MUST include information relating to:

1.Identify the independent variables. What are they and how you would measure them?

2.Identify the dependent variables. What are they and how you would measure them?

3.Explain the procedure for each study.

4.Describe your sampling technique for each study.

Support your assignment with at least five scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including seminal articles, may be included.