Psychology 242; Research in Psychology
Dr. David J. McKirnan

The Paper Assignment: Overall Structure

Introduction                    10 points.

• Statement of the phenomenon you are interested in.
• General, "big picture" description of a research question.
• At least two APA-style references to published articles in scientific journals.

Theory                                10 points.

• Causal statement of how the psychological processes that underlie your phenomenon relate to each other; addresses “why” or “how” the phenomenon works.
• Describe how the theory is important to understanding (or changing) the phenomenon.

Hypothesis                      10 points

• A prediction or empirical question that clearly follows from or tests the theory. Must represent a clear prediction about operationalizable variables that reflect the hypothetical constructs underlying the phenomenon.
• Must be testable and/or logically falsifiable.

• Who are your research participants? What type of sample is this (e.g., random, convenience, targeted, etc.)
• Here / how did you recruit them?
• If there are serious sampling limitations mention them here and explain why your approach was still justified.

Procedures:

• What was the overall design? 
• Was this a true experiment or a quasi-experimental study? 
• What were the overall study procedures? 
• What, step-by-step, did you do with each participant?
• How did you obtain informed consent? What ethical issues may there be (e.g., stressful conditions, deception or placebo groups…), and how did you deal with them?

Measures:
How did you construct your Independent Variable?

• Was it a quasi-independent variable?
•  Based on an existing group membership (people how got therapy v. those who did not, Republicans v. Democrats, etc…)?
• Based on a measurement (people above or below some score on a scale, e.g., high v. low stress…)?
• Was it a true independent variable, i.e. that you manipulated or controlled?
• Was it presented directly, such as a drug dose?
•  What was the dose?
• How do you know it was the correct dose?
• Was it presented indirectly, such as instructional conditions designed to induce stress v. relaxation?
• How do you know you actually induced the condition you meant to?  What was your manipulation check?

How did you operationally define your Dependent Variable? 

• Specifically, where did your numbers come from – what kind of measures did you use, how did you go from, e.g., a bunch of survey questions to an actual score, etc. 
•  Were the measures known to be reliable and valid? How?

• Use the data from your Week 12 assignment, or develop your own data sheets showing all the observations for each participant.
• Provide basic descriptive data: Ms, Standard Deviations.
• Perform your statistics, showing all calculations.   You must show every step involved in deriving your t score.
• Provide key statistical assumptions:  your alpha level, p value.
• Graph your data to show the statistical effects you are testing.

Interpreting results

• How did you determine if your results were statistically significant? 
• Describe your results in relation to your hypothesis:
• Was the hypothesis supported?
• Why is it important if it was / was not?

Discussion                      10 points

• What are the implications of your results for the hypothesis – was it supported? Was an alternate hypothesis supported?
• What are the implications for the initial theory or empirical question you asked?
• What were the limitations of your study in terms of Internal Validity?
  • ...from the way you operationalized or measured your variables?
  • ...from the overall design or larger research approach?
• Limitations to External Validity, in terms of:
  • Experimental manipulation / independent variable
  • Assessment of the outcome / dependent variable
  • The research setting or context
  • Your sample or sampling procedure.

  Conclusion                      10 points

  • What do we now know about phenomenon or "big picture"?
  • How has psychological theory been (or not been…) advanced?
  • What basic descriptive or other data do we now have about the phenomenon that we did not have before?
  • What other research follows from this?

   

  Writing style             10 points APA format, including at least two references to scientific papers. Click here for an electronic guide to APA format. The entire paper must be in your own words unless you are explicitly quoting another source. Grammar, spelling, layout, paragraph structure, sentence structure, overall clarity.

   

  Paper Sections

  A) In the text

  • The first page is the title page. Include your name, the title of your paper, the date, "Psychololgy 242, Research Methods", and your TA name.
  • The second page is your abstract. It is a summary of your paper, 100-120 words long. This is the only part of the actual paper that should be single-spaced; everything else is double spaced.
  • The body of the paper starts on page 3 and continues through your reference section.

  B) Appendices
  Attach appendices after the reference section. They do not count against your page limit. Label each appendix separately.

  1. Your measures (survey, questionnaire, interview, etc). This must be typed.
  2. Your informed consent document.  (For an example of an informed consent document from one of my HIV studies click here).
  3. Your raw data; this does not need to be typed.
  4. Statistical computations. This does not have to be typed, but it must be orderly enough for us to read and follow.
  5. Copies of the abstracts of the articles you used as references. Do not turn in the whole articles.

  The informed consent statement

  Any research involving data directly collected from people must have an informed consent statement.  For your studies this does not need to be very long. It should contain each of the sections given in the informed consent file (see also, week 4 Lecture notes).  This is the template UIC provides researchers to complete their consent documents. 

  Get a complete description of informed consent and other human subjects protections at the UIC Office for the Protection of Research Subjects at: http://www.uic.edu/depts/ovcr/oprs/. 

   

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