However,
throughout the assessment period there was an increase in the number of academic examinations
reported from 0 on day 1while 52 of the 59 participants reported examinations on day 14. A closer
examination of these trends revealed that during days 1–7 the average number of exams reported
was 36.29 (SD ¼ 16.18) and during days 8 through 14 the mean was 41.00 (SD ¼ 6.43). Because
of the observed variability in the number of exams reported between these two time periods we
input dummy codes for each day of data collection which resulted in an interval scale of
increasingly higher values from day 1 to day 14 of data collection. This scale was then included as
an independent variable