In See the Ball, Hit the Ball: Apparent Ball Size is Correlated with Batting Average, Witt & Proffitt () examine the ways a batters perception of the balls size impacts batting average. The research question is whether recent positive performance in the sport has a bearing on ball size perception. In other words, when players have been hitting well, do they perceive the ball as being bigger and therefore easier to hit? The textbook points out that research questions should be focused on specific relationships between variables, narrowed down from broader areas of interest.
In this study, the researchers hypothesize the affirmative: players on a good streak, with a high batting average, will perpetuate their streak because they psychologically perceive the ball as being bigger in their field of vision. A bigger ball in the field of vision, even if an illusion, leads to players continuing to hit the ball more frequently than if they perceive the ball as being smaller. The text points out that research hypotheses are partly based on prior literature, and identifying gaps in the literature. The researchers in this case cite from...
Informed consent was acquired. In...
…from memory and not during actual game play. Moreover, the researchers acknowledge that the results determine correlation but not causality. It is impossible to know whether perception is impacting performance first, or whether performance is impacting perception, which is in turn again reinforcing performance. This paper is a trustworthy source but cannot be used as definitive evidence of any causal relationship. Sample size was also relatively small (n = 47), and a convenience sample.
The source is credible in the sense that it appears in a scholarly journal, Psychological Science, which is peer-reviewed. To determine a sources credibility, the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay (2017) states that scholarly sources published in journals like Psychological Science are…
