Academic Conversation and Inquiry Process

Prior to my research, academia had only investigated 2d:4d ratio with traits such as mental illness and physiological diseases such as cancers. And further, research had only been conducted on fluid testosterone levels and spatial ability. I am able to contribute the connection of these two ideas: prenatal testosterone levels and spatial intelligence, using a non-invasive indicator of prenatal androgenization(2d:4d ratio). The relationship between prenatal androgenization and spatial ability-intelligence has not been extensively studied, and this is where my investigation comes in. By examining the correlation between the testosterone-2d:4d ratio and spatial ability-intelligence, I aim to shed light on the potential role of prenatal androgen exposure in determining spatial intelligence. 

My initial methodology consisted of taking a simple random sample of 400 students at the high school, to leave about a 60% margin of non-response individuals, so I would still have enough participants to generalize to the population of the high school(need 250). I stratified by grade, using seminars as clusters(seminars are essentially alphabetical home rooms at the high school). 100 students per grade accounts for approximately 5 seminar classes. Once these seminar classes are randomly selected, I would go in person to these seminars to increase the number of participants, and explain my project to the students. I will hand out consent forms at that time, and leave copies with the seminar teacher so students can take them after I leave if they’re interested. The consent forms will contain information about the experiment, so parents and guardians can make informed decisions on whether or not they want their child to participate. I was initially going to schedule specific seminars to come in on specific days of the week to avoid overflow, but I ended up hosting the study every Access period in February, and putting those dates on the consent form so students could choose when to come in, in order to promote the most amount of participation possible. In addition, I provided a QR code on the consent form that allowed parents/guardians to view the types of questions that would be on the exam, so they could make the best decision possible when allowing their child to participate. I initially planned to make an exam consisting of 35 questions, when in reality it came to 26(not counting preliminary questions). The study was conducted in Mr. McBride's room, with a message on the board reading "If you feel uncomfortable with any part of this study, please feel free to leave at any time", as well as a QR code that would take students to the exam. As students came in, they would hand me their consent form, receive a randomized ticket number, and scan the QR code and take the exam. Once finished with the exam, students will come up to the front with their ticket and get an image of their hand taken. I was initially going to debrief my participants post-study, but since there was variability in when people finished their exams, I decided against a debrief, deciding the information I put on the consent form was sufficient. 

Data collection ended February 29, and I began taking the measurements of all the participants hands, in preparation for converting them to ratios, and entering them into an Excel sheet with their corresponding scores on the exam. Unfortunately, as I was doing this, I was not finding an association between my variables. Once I had all ratios and scores entered, I generated my final scatterplot to assess the correlation and unfortunately did not find evidence to suggest a correlation between 2d:4d ratio and spatial intelligence. My correlation coefficient was -0.03896104, suggesting an extremely weak(practically non-existant) negative correlation. So, my hypothesis was not supported by my data, and in addition, I had a total of 56 participants, which was not enough to generalize to the high schools population. 

However, I was able to find a relationship between test score and gender. Males had a higher test average than females, contributing to the already existing academic conversation that fluid testosterone levels impact spatial intelligence. In addition to these findings, I believe that if my study was replicated in a more controlled setting and with more participants, there may have been difference results. Unfortunately, there were too many confounding variables that existed in my study, which I believe resulted in the inconclusive data. 

Stay connected for updates on my research! Thank you!

Here linked below is my presentation:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1so9ga6JZ37kU24WZ0GRUr8mwvktBvIxztKNWgHH8FWs/edit?usp=sharing