Getting ready to test
If I told you I will measure how difficult a task was by asking people after the task "How difficult was this task to do on a scale of 1-10?" then I have used a simple survey question to do this to the idea of difficulty, by making it something I can properly measure.
What is Operationalize(ed/ing) it?
...due to its specific effects on people, Meditation is considered to fall into this broad category of stress management.
What is a Body Method?
This would be why someone does what makes them happy, and refuses to do things that make them upset.
What is the Hedonic Principle?
If I want to conduct an experiment, I better establish this beforehand. After all, if I pick it afterwards so I can't prove it wrong, then I didn't really do any science.
What is the Hypothesis?
...this, rather frustrating, action of the brain causes a lot of the standard symptoms of sickness.
What is the Sickness Response?
This is the harder kind of change in habit.
What is Cutting out a Bad Habit?
This had better not change one bit during an experiment! Or, if it is going to be different, you had better make sure you accounted for that with randomized samples, matched pairs, or another method of making it one of these.
What is a Control?
...this area of the brain is responsible for emotional control, logic, and planning. Plus, it's the last to be finished developing! No wonder kids and teens are so impulsive.
What is the Frontal Lobe? (or, the Prefrontal Cortex?)
This could explain someone who hates eggs not wanting anything to do with any food that has them.
What is Avoidance Motivation?
Establishing this requires MORE than just a relationship. If you want to go this far, you'd better make sure you can show that changing one thing will FORCE the other to change, for certain, every time.
What is Causation?
...someone at this stage of responding to a stress has just encountered it.
What is the Alarm Phase?
Someone experiencing this kind of motivation would explain why they will do something they don't enjoy just to get the reward that it will bring.
What is Extrinsic Motivation?
This is the general style of in formation gathering that we are supporting with all these preparations, or another name for the Scientific Method. And no, it has nothing to do with the British empire.
What is Empiricism / the Empirical Method?
...something that causes a recurring or drawn-out stress in someone's life is one of these.
What is a Chronic Stressor?
If someone cannot answer why, do this to the task. It makes someone a lot more likely to be able to explain their motivation.
What is make it harder?