Essay Sample with the Published Experimental Design Checklist Comparison

Sleep is a crucial homeostatic process that has well-established effects on the cognitive, psychology and the behavioral functionality of an individual and their long-term health, however, there is anecdotal support of the function in social perception which include the health and attractiveness judgment. An individual's sleep history hugely affects the general integral part in the perception of their health and attractiveness. Until this point in time, the beauty sleep experiment does has not being proven scientifically, however; the importance of sleep biologically has sided with the perception of sleep and its cues in other individuals. It's seemingly warranted to examine such sensitivity as disturbed sleep and disorders are being more common in the present society and often coexist with various common health issues that include inflammatory and hypertension conditions.

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Survey and experiment

A description of the relationship between sleep deprivation and perceived attractiveness and health of an individual and an experiment is conducted to determine the results. In the experiment, untrained observers are required to rate the faces of individuals who had been captured after their regular night sleep and after they have been deprived sleep overnight. The primary source of information is the facial photographers in social communication. The experiment hypothesized that the untrained observers would perceive the sleep-deprived individuals as more tired, less attractive and consequently less healthy compared to those who had the normal night sleep.

The experimental design

Faces of 23 adults are photographed with an age range of18-30 years, and 11 women are in the sample between 14.00 to 15.00 in two different conditions under a balanced design. The experiment was also conducted after a normal sleep at night and a period of 8 hours sleep was allowed to the sample individuals. The second experiment is also conducted after a night of deprived sleep, between 02.00 to 07.00 and they were deprived sleep for 31 hours. The participants were from four universities in Stockholm where we excluded 44 of potential participants. They were excluded on various bases which include abnormal sleep requirements, sleep disruptions, health problems and the main reason was availability on the said study days. Some potential participants were also excluded from a previous history of alcohol consumption specifically two days before the experiment. A single lady did not show up, and the overall number of participants was 12 men and 12 women.

The experiment allowed the participants to sleep in their homes as sleep time was recorded and confirmed on sleep diaries. The sleep diary information included the quality, latency sleepiness, and the duration. Text messages were sent to the researchers immediately before and after bed and on the night before the deprivation.

On the other hand, the sleep deprivation conditions were set and included a bed restriction to up to 5 hours, and the participants were also required to send text messages before and after bed. Four hours was the estimated mean sleep duration. During the sleep deprivation time, the participants were closely monitored on the laboratories. The sleep deprivation conditions also required that the participants reported to the laboratories at 22.00 and stayed awake for nearly 16 hours. Before the actual photography, the participants were required to stay indoors to avoid sunlight and weather interference.

A constant white balance room was used by six photographers who used 38722592 resolution cameras. The head to camera distance was fixed for both situations to make sure that the surface area was fixed with the focal length being adapted o the size of the head of each individual.

Statistical analysis

Data analysis of the experiment was conducted using a multilevel mixed linear regression. The linear regression has two random in depended crossed effects that are responsible for randomized variation between the participants and the observers applying the Stata mixed procedure. The effect of the condition is presented as the overall percentage change from the original or the baseline condition being the reference point, and an absolute value is in millimeters that are rated on the overall analog scale. Every data was present in the analysis.

The results

Each of the 46 photographs was rated by 65 observers to determine the level of attractiveness, the tiredness and health perception of the participants in the photographs. There were 138 ratings by every observer and 2990 ratings for every factor rated. The results showed that the individuals who had been deprived of sleep were rated as less health on the bases of the visual analog scale score and had a mean of 63. This was in comparison to the individuals who had slept normally. The normal sleep conditions in regards to attractiveness and health were low at 6% and 4% while tiredness was at 19%.

Conclusion

Individuals can detect cues in regards to the sleep loss as the cues modify the judgment of attractiveness and health. The conclusion is in agreement with the existing models that describe the relationship between good health and sleep of individuals. Future research should keenly focus on these cues in a clinical setup to determine the tiredness and patients' health in the clinical diagnosis.