experiment

The Effect of Religious Practices on Depression

One ‘s faith can provide comfort in times of stress and difficulties Films and literature , both fictitious and nonfiction , abound with people calling out to God in distress , and often receiving miracles in return as answers to their prayers (Toto . Yet , nobody has ever tested the effect of religious practices on depression . This study , therefore intends to fill in the gap in our knowledge of psychology by carrying out an experiment with a pool of 653 college-age volunteers to test the effect of religious practices [banner_entry_middle]

on depression

We will randomly select our representative sample of individuals from our population sample to be tested for the effects of religious practices on depression . Half of the volunteers would be thus selected to practice religious under controlled conditions . The remaining half of the population sample in our study would act as the control group These individuals would simply be filling out the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI ) before and after the period of our experiment

This experiment is designed to last for a period of a month during the summer when college students are on a long break . All individuals in our representative sample – who would also have to fill out the BDI before and after the experiment – will be asked to sign a form prior to the start of the experiment period to declare that we have their informed consent to use them as subjects to study the effect of religious practices on depression . These subjects , regardless of their beliefs in religion , would then be able to start the experiment during which each of them would be assigned a separate closed room to practice their faith undisturbed for four hours non-stop , every day of the month in which the experiment is conducted . Our subjects who are tested for the effect of religious

THE EFFECT OF RELIGIOUS PRACTICES ON DEPRESSION

Page 2 practices on depression would be allowed to bring all things necessary for them to practice their religion at the time assigned . These objects may be prayer mats , scriptures , incense , meditation CD ‘s , nothing , or anything whatsoever

There is no issue of experimenter bias involved in this study given that the BDI is a valid and reliable measure for depression , and the method used to study the effect of religious practices would be strictly scientific . Even those subjects who inform us that they do not practice any religious would be allowed by the experimenter to have the opportunity to spend time with themselves during the four hours of meditation assigned to them

However , it is possible that many of the subjects who are being tested for the effects of religious practices on depression would start to feel better , emotionally and psychologically , imagining that there must be an effect of religious practices on depression . This placebo effect is possible due to the fact that we would already have provided them with the of the study on the informed consent form

Following a month of rigorous religious… [banner_entry_footer]