Research: Sugar and Tests

When I was younger, before a test, my mother would always tell me to have a piece of chocolate to calm my nerves. Throughout the years, a few of my teachers have shown curiosity about whether the intake of sugar before a test has any correlation with how well a student performs on a test.

The type of design that would best suit my research question is a correlational study, in which I would use naturalistic observation on a class of students.

A teacher, whose class is about to take a test, offers the students a bar of chocolate that they’re only allowed to eat before the test starts, if at all. I’d jot down which students ate the chocolate.

Throughout the exam, I’d look for signs of energy or tiredness (normal affects of sugar) on students who ate the candy. I’d also observe the students who did not eat the candy, to have something to compare the first group to.

I’d think that the group that ate the candy before the test will do better on the first part of the test than on the second part of the test, but I don’t think there would be a huge difference between the test grades of the group that ate the candy and the group that didn’t.

If, from this naturalistic observation study, I come to find that sugar might be related to how well students do – meaning, the results of the grades of the students who didn’t eat the candy and the students who did vary greatly, I might do an experiment to research further. Said experiment would have a great effect on sugar intake, because if parents know that sugar has a positive/negative effect on their children’s test grades, they’d be more likely to give/not give their children sugar before a test.