It has since been known that depression symptoms are associated with prolonged consumption of artificial sweeteners. However, enough evidence has not been able to confirm this claim. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the impacts of prolonged consumption of artificial sweeteners on symptoms of depression. The research will include about 90 research participants who will be randomly selected from the general population, which will especially come from the public population that does not regularly consume artificial sweeteners and has a negative history of clinical depression (Sharma, 2022). The sample size will be large enough to accommodate participants leaving the project before the research concludes. The project will utilize an environmental research design composed of experimental and control groups. Participants will be assigned randomly to either the control or experimental group. The experimental group will include participants that daily consume small amounts of artificial sweeteners like aspartame in beverages for six months. The control groups will be individuals consuming placebo artificial sweetener beverages with no artificial sweeteners but will have the same appearance and taste as the experimental group.
The dependent variable for this study will be depression, and the independent variable will be the consumption of artificial sweeteners. Before commencing the experiment, all participants will take a baseline test to evaluate their level of depression symptoms. You can utilize a standardized depression evaluation tool, such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) or The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ – 9). The experimental group will get artificial sweeteners daily; for control ones, they should take a placebo within a stipulated period. Participants will provide the depression assessment tool (such as weekly or bi-weekly) regularly throughout the intervention phase to compare changes in depressive symptoms (Kashino et al., 2021). The depression assessment scores will act as the dependent variable. Finally, at the end of the intervention phase, all participants will be re-tested using the same depression assessment tool which was used in the baseline. Statistical methods such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) or t-tests will be used to analyze the data and compare changes in depression scores between experimental and control groups. Determine the practical significance of any observed differences by calculating effect sizes.
The hypothesis for the study will be as follows: The null hypothesis states that there are no depression effects between participants consuming artificial sweeteners and those who consume a placebo. The alternative hypothesis states that prolonged consumption of artificial sweeteners causes symptoms of depression (Kashino et al., 2021). In this hypothetical study, we ignore the limitation drawn from ethics; in a real situation setting, we would have to consider gaining informed consent from the subjects involved and ensuring their health and confidentiality. In addition, it is advisable to debrief participants after your study and ensure they have access to psychological support if required. If such research were conducted in real life, it would face ethical issues because putting people on an intentionally risky substance is not generally ethically correct (Kashino et al., 2021). Moreover, the findings of this study, if they were true in reality, should be taken with a grain of salt as there is no way to know whether these things caused depression or are part and parcel.
References
Kashino, I., Kochi, T., Imamura, F., Eguchi, M., Kuwahara, K., Nanri, A., … & Mizoue, T. (2021). Prospective association of soft drink consumption with depressive symptoms. Nutrition, 81, 110860. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089990072030143X
Sharma, S. (2022). Nursing Research and Statistics-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5H2eEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Experimental+study+in+nursing&ots=Bd3GHzExsd&sig=Iz7EufCwI5ytvT_xCD3qbLJHnIw
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