Psychology experiments are usually long, painstaking surveys and tests that sometimes take years to complete. They do, however, give us some insight into how the human mind works and develops from the day we are born to the day we die. Deciphering the information these experiments generate is sometimes just as hard as performing them, and to a person with no background in psychology it is almost impossible. The following three experiments were found on the APA website and are good examples of modern psychological research. The first experiment I am going to discuss concerns the effects of marital status, income, and family functioning on African American adolescent self-esteem. It was conducted by Jelani Mandara and Carolyn B. Murray and supported in part by the National Institute of Health Grant. The experimentation took place in Southern California using a sample of one hundred sixteen children that were fifteen years of age; sixty-four percent of these children were female. The families were selected from lists of parents in four school districts and were reflective of the general trends for African American families in Southern California according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. To determine parental marital status and average family income the testers simply asked the parents of the children. The rest of the variables were determined by two tests given to the children. The first test was the Multi-Dimensional Self-Esteem Inventory (MDSEI), which is a 116-item test to assess the individual aspects of self-esteem in each child. These aspects are feelings of competence, personal power, lovability, likeability, self-control, moral self-approval, and body functioning. The second test given was the Family Environment Scale (FES), which consists of 90 true of false type questions to assess the environment within the family and its functioning. This test has proven accurate many times with African American families even though the nor...
