Week 10.
Finish surveys, begin basic statistics.
Lecture notes
This week we will finish
surveys, and begin introductory statistics.
Lecture notes: Statistics notes # 1.
Readings
Study for your exam on Wednesday. I have been giving exam notes as part of lectures: look at the lecture summaries & your notes.Discussion group Assignment
Write the methods and results sections of your paper.
This is an important chance to get feedback on your
paper, so use it!!
You
should already have written your introduction, hypotheses and overall design for
Week 8. Now write up your methods,
and integrate them with your introduction. This is a lot for
a weekly homework assignment – you
may not get through all of it – but if you are wise you
will use this as an impetus to get the guts of your paper done now,
and to get feedback on it in group. For hints on how a final
paper looks, go to the Guide for reading articles.
The method section is the major part of your paper. Each of these elements needs to be explained clearly. See the Paper Structure web page for more details, including how points will be assigned to each section.
- Who are your research participants?
- What population are you generalizing to?
- What is the criteria for considering someone a member of that population?
- What is the n?
- What type of sample is this?
- Probability? How will you recruit a random sample of your population?
- Non-probability? What type? (Simple convenience? Targeted? Multi-frame?).
- Where / how will you recruit them?
- What concrete steps will you take to contact with potential participants?
- What will you say to them during the enrollment process? What will they understand the study to be about?
- What are the potential sampling biases or limitations?
- What is the overall design?
- You must propose an experimental study, not simple measurement.
- You must have one (and only one) Independent Variable and (only) one Dependent variable.
- Are you conducting a “true” experiment or quasi-experiment?
- If you have non-equivalent groups discuss how this affects the study.
- What were the step by step study procedures
- How did participants enter the study; literally, what did you have them do?
- What instructions did you give them?
- Were they at a computer? In a social interaction? Describe the procedures clearly enough that someone else could read them and repeat your study exactly.
- How did you operationally define your Independent Variable: what was your experimental manipulation, what were the experimental v. control groups?
- How did you obtain informed consent? Describe the IRB approval. What other ethical issues may there be (e.g., stressful conditions, deception or placebo groups…), and how did you deal with that?
- When the experiment was concluded what did you do or say to debrief the participant and ensure s/he was informed and had his/her questions answered?
- How did you operationally define your Dependent
Variable?
- Was this measure construct valid? Did it clearly map onto or express your hypothesis or theory? How so?
- Describe your assessment of the DV concretely enough that someone else could get the same numbers you did.
- Was the measure of your dependent variable known to be reliable and valid? How?
