You should present a cogent argument based on your critical analysis of the questions posed, using appropriate psychological terminology. It is not enough to answer a question by merely listing facts.


Dr. Aguilera conducts psychological research that examines factors associated with college student academic performance. She administered a survey to 127 participants from her university’s student subject pool. In the survey, she asked students to report their current college grade point average (GPA). Dr. Aguilera also asked questions about sleeping, eating habits, and social media use.

In addition, she asked ten questions that assessed anxiety. Participants indicated their responses to each anxiety item on a 5-point scale, where 1 indicated no anxiety and 5 indicated extreme anxiety. Dr. Aguilera summed each participant’s answers to these 10 items to form one anxiety score.

Dr. Aguilera analyzed the data and found that the correlation between anxiety and academic performance was
(results significant) and that the relationship between hours sleeping per night and academic performance was a correlation of 0.

Part A

Based on these data, state the most appropriate conclusions Dr. Aguilera could make about the relationships between the following.

Anxiety and academic performance
Hours sleeping per night and academic performance
Part B

Explain how each of the following may contribute to the interpretation of Dr. Aguilera’s findings.

Operational definition
Cohort effect