| Hmmm. Two issues stand out for me. 1. If I'm understanding this correctly, it seems like the active control (stretching) performed worse than the so-called passive control (watching a "popular sitcom"). The Cohen's d for the active control ranged from 0.214 to 0.737, and 0.102 - 0.286 for the passive control. So watching a "popular sitcom" is closer to aerobic activity in its effect on recovery? 2. The abstract says the passive control was watching a "popular sitcom", this is weird. Does this mean the researchers picked a show for the subjects to watch? That doesn't make any sense, if I had to watch a show I didn't select that would be annoying and possibly interfere with recovery. But maybe the researchers didn't A Cohen's d of 0.2 is considered small and the values for the passive controls top out at 0.286, and apparently there's even a negative relationship with restlessness. My bet is that if someone tried to do a similar study but instead of picking a sitcom for the subject they allowed the subjects to simply watching whatever TV they would like to watch at the moment, the effect size would disappear. I am assuming I'm just missing something here, but from my fairly basic, non-expert understanding, it's not possible to draw the conclusions that the authors drew. Furthermore, the design seemed flawed from the beginning (although kudos for providing an active control). The main issue seems to be that their passive control wasn't really passive, it was making subject watch a show that they might not normally watch for relaxation purposes. |