Calvin, a retired clinical psychologist and candlemaker, wonders whether his family's beeswax candles help alleviate stress. Calvin is familiar with research that suggests thatfragrant scents can contribute to psychological and physiological reductions in stress. Pending his study's results, Calvin would like to print "stress-less" candle stickers that will promote his family's candle sales.

To recruit participants, Calvin leaves a sign-up sheet outside his family business. He offers a 10% discount to shoppers willing to partake in his brief study and offers them an additional 10% off if they sign up with a friend. He also recruited some students from a local community college where Calvin gives guest lectures from time-to-time.

In total, 100 students enrolled in Calvin's study. Participant ages ranged from 19-to-63, including 12 college students and 88 community adults. Participants identified as 88% White, 6% African American, 3% Asian and Pacific Islander, 3% Multiracial/Other. About 14% of participants identified at Latinx.

For this study, participants sat beside a lit beeswax candle for two minutes. During this time, participants completed a one-item self-report question regarding the pleasantness of its beeswax scent (i.e., "How pleasant is this candle?"). They also provided saliva samples before lighting and after snuffing the candle. Saliva samples were used to measure cortisol, a stress hormone.

Participants' cortisol levels were measured before and after smelling the beeswax candle. All participants underwent the same procedure, and no randomization was employed.

Regardless of how pleasant they found the candles to be, participants had less cortisol (or stress) after smelling the beeswax.Among shoppers who participated in Calvin's study, Calvin also found that pleasantness ratings were not related to how many beeswax candles each person bought. Overall, Calvin believes that his candles are effective at reducing stress.

Based on your reading of this study, answer the following questions:

1. What is the research question?
2. What is the research design?
3. Which framework of psychopathology (e.g., biological, sociocultural) is the researcher using in this study? Briefly describe this approach.
4. What is the hypothesis?
5. What is the independent variable?
6. What is the dependent variable?
7. What were the main findings?
8. Is the researcher's conclusion valid? Why or why not?
9. What two changes would you make to the design to increase the internal validity of the study? Briefly describe the changes and rationales.
10. What is one change you would make to the design to increase the external validity of the study? Briefly describe the change and associated rationale.