Experimental research method form the basis of understanding the above research problem. The independent variable is students’ involvement in social media while the dependent variable is their academic performance. Understandably, different high schools have different policies regarding students’ usage of cell phones, tablets, or other internet enabled gadgets within the school compound. Therefore, the research will begin by selecting at least four five different 6 different schools, three of which are those that limit students from carrying phones to class and the other three which are liberal pertaining to this matter. The second stage will be to select a random sample of 10 students from each of these schools. Then using questionnaires, each of the participants in the experiment would be required to respond to closed ended structured questions. The basic questions, for instance, will be:
The validity of this experiment is most likely to be compromised due to experimenters’ bias. As already stated, most experimenters get into a research study with an already formulated mindset of what the expected results could be. To address this issue, double blind procedure may be used. For instance, the experimenter would first get the answers for question 4 above before checking out the answers for questions 1-3.
Before carrying out any experimental research study, it is ethical to always seek the informed consent of the participants as well as get permission from the authorities. For this case, authorities will be the school administration. Also, it is necessary to always maintain privacy and confidentiality of the data gathered. This is to imply that the names of the students who participated in the research should remain concealed at all costs not unless the students permit its usage.