Experimental Research

As we talked about this in class, experimental research has many facets to its operation. There tends to be a certain need for control in experiments, certainly so the researchers have something neutral to base their findings off of. In  experimental research, there are hypothesis' which allow for the researchers to make an educated assumption on the outcome of their research before they begin the experiment. During experiments, there may be control groups and experimental groups. the control group does not change, while the experimental group is exposed to whatever it is the researchers are testing. Many times there are dependent and independent variables within an experiment.  The dependent variable is influenced by the independent variable ( which is manipulated, or changed).
In an experiment done with college students at a southern college, researchers studied how students viewed and perceived PR articles compared to news articles. The study was extremely interesting, and certainly made a ton of sense at the end. The Hypothesis, was that students would be more prone to believe a story if it had a multimedia aspect to it. A news article online with pictures, videos, and other links may seem to be more credible to students regardless where it may come from.
I found the independent variables to be interesting, because they manipulated who was reading what kind of articles. Some students may have only been exposed to newspapers with one picture and many words. This may show how students aren't intrigued by newspaper articles compared to other medias.
On the other hand some students were given more than one type of media and the choice to select either online news articles, newspapers, etc...
The hypothesis was correct, in that the students that were observing more than one type of media report, enjoyed the multimedia articles online better, because of the interactive web layout, which allows them to see pictures, videos, and links. All of those things may seem to make a story more credible. 
Credibility, accuracy, and bias were the dependent variable for the students to gauge.
The experiment was done well, and I agree with the outcome of the experiment. If I was given an article to read online with video and other links for a story, and a newspaper, I would probably want to read and be more likely to believe in the online article rather than just a newspaper article story.