My research will need to be
conducted over 2 months period of time. All the patients at the clinic that I
seek to employ as participants have already been at the clinic at least 4
months and I will not use brand new patients. Thus, I will check the 15th,
30th, and 50th session if possible, conducting a diagnostic test (Conners
Adult Rating Scale or TOVA test) if necessary and not already conducted by the
clinician. I will be looking back into patient records to check their progress
at specific points. I will start conducting research the first week of January.
I already work at the clinic after school, so I will able to start as soon as
possible. I will then collect data up until mid-February. I will then spend the
next month up till early March to analyze the results and formulate the paper.
Chronologically, first I will
attempt to get consent from as many patients as I can (I am hoping close 12
adults and 12 children with a close to equal number of females and males). Then
I will look into their patient records to see their progress, marking how many
sessions they have done and taking note of past Conners Adult Rating Scale or
TOVA results for my data set. If there has not been a progress checked at
certain points of treatment (preferably close to session 15, 30, or 50), then I
will conduct the test myself. I am going to only use data of training on
the two most common places on
the brain that are targeted to reduce ADHD: CZ and FZ .
While most of the project will be data
collection after the clinic has already conducted test (possibly conducting
test myself if information is missing/patient is in the midst of treatment), a
complex component is analyzing these results to ensure statistical significance
and logic. From beginning/mid-February to early March, I will be working on the
analysis of these results and the writing of the paper. A connection will be
drawn between number of neurofeedback sessions and number of symptoms that have
decreased (seeing if according to the rating scales more questions were
answered differently, more positively), I can see if there is a correlation. If
more sessions means less symptoms exhibited according to the patient, I can
identify there is a trend. I can compare the correlation coefficient of the
adult group and child group to compare the effectiveness of neurofeedback
therapy. The Hedges G’ measure could be calculated by taking the mean (in
this case the mean number of neurofeedback sessions and mean number of symptoms
reduced) divided by the standard deviation of the results, thus calculating the
effect sizes for neurofeedback therapy sessions. I can use the Hedges G’
measure final number of the adult group and child group to compare the
effectiveness of neurofeedback therapy. Then I will analyze these results,
determining if neurofeedback therapy affects adults or children equally or
impacts both differently. I will present these results in a table with a
description/explanation underneath to describe the success rates of neurofeedback
therapy on adults and children.
I think I will be able to complete
this plan and this is enough time to procure results. The data collection does
not take much time and the analysis can be done at home with all the
information I collect throughout the month of January. I think I have left
enough time for room
for any inconvenience that could happen.
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