PLEASE NOTE: This assignment is to be done together with your lab partner.
For this experimental psychology project, you are expected to go through all the steps involved in doing research in psychology. The first step involves writing a proposal that will involve: observing and describing some phenomenon; researching the literature on the subject (for this project we require a minimum of five psychology journal research papers plus any review papers or book chapters if available); generating one (or more) experimental hypothesis; and designing an experiment to test your hypothesis. The type of design and all variables must be explicitly identified and all details regarding subject selection and assignment, experimental procedure and design, and proposed data analysis must be specified. Once your proposal has been approved, you will conduct your study and write it up. As in the labs, this will also require you to organize and statistically analyze the data, prepare appropriate tables or figures, and interpret the significance of the results and relate them to published data.
IMPORTANT: This is a creative endeavour: your project should present your thinking on the phenomenon you propose to study. One of your goals is to demonstrate that you are capable of: critically evaluating scientific research; generating one or more creative research questions; converting these questions into a well designed and practical experimental procedure; conducting the experiment and presenting the results in a concise and coherent fashion. Your experiment must be one that you can conduct within the term period, and it must not raise any serious ethical concerns. Experiments involving any kind of drug (alcohol, caffeine, etc.) or studies of sensitive topics like abuse, suicide ideation, etc. are not acceptable. You must also plan to use an available population and apparatus and be able to collect all your data within a short period of time (a few weeks maximum).
Step 1: Research Proposal:
On Jan 18/19, you will be submitting a method section which outlines your experimental design and will have a completed research project approval form to be used in the peer ethics review process.
A Research Proposal must be submitted on January 27/28. To help meet this deadline, we will some classtime to work on your hypotheses and experimental designs. By the time the proposal is passed in, you should be in a position to run participants; that is, all details of the procedure and pilot study should be worked out, all necessary materials should be available and all forms should be complete (see below). Most importantly, however, before you begin to collect data, you must obtain approval from either Jill or Peter.
NOTE: Do not collect ANY data (not even pilot data) before approval is given!
Your research proposal must be written in APA format except your results section will be brief (similar to your proposal last term except specific) and no Discussion is required. In the Results, simply state what you expect the data will look like. You must also include how you will analyze your data. When describing the method section or any other time you are discussing the proposed study, you should use future tense as the events have not yet happened.
You must include the following when you pass in your Proposal:
1) Research Project Approval Form with the following information:
2) Experimental Procedure - be sure to include such information as design, dependent and independent variables, as well as addressing issues of subject distress, deception, control groups, etc.
3) Debriefing Procedure - include the information to be provided to participants to ensure that all participants are fully debriefed (if using human subjects).
4) Student and Faculty Approval
(see Ethical Concerns). No research project will be graded unless prior
approval was given (i.e., you will get 0). You should use the form
provided in this section. Attach the signed approval form to the back of
your Research Report.
2) A Consent Form to be read and signed by all (human) participants you use. See the example of a consent form in Appendix D and develop your own consent form for your research. The following is the minimal information that should be included:
2) that it is part of a course requirement (state the name and number of the course)
3) participation is voluntary
4) that you do not need names - assuring confidentiality
5) that the data will be analyzed as a group
6) whether testing will be conducted individually or in a group
7) the amount of time required for their participation
8) who they can contact for further information or if they have any concerns or complaints
9) briefly what will be required of them.
2) debrief the participants - tell them your hypotheses, where they can get more information and find out your results if they want to.
As it would be impossible to have all projects to go through the Psychology Department's Ethical Committee. As an alternative, each project will require peer approval and approval of the Lab Instructor or Professor. Some lab time will be allotted to the ethical and methodological review of each study. Read the information on Ethical Principles in Appendix B and identify any ethical issues to be addressed in your project. (Note: All research involves ethical issues; some blatant and others subtle). Write out these ethical issues and how they will be addressed (Write these on the back of the approval form). How will you resolve any ethical issues to ensure your participants are not harmed in any way? Bring this page and the filled in approval form to class. The class will then be divided into small groups of two or three lab pairs where ethical concerns and methodological considerations of each study will be discussed. You will be required to get signatures from two classmates. These signatures demonstrate that they have discussed with you any ethical dilemmas and methodological concerns, and that they approve of your solutions and find the methodology ethically acceptable. You will not be doing your fellow students a favour by simply signing their form as flaws in a study are best found and averted early in the research process. Take your responsibility as peer reviewers seriously. If peer approval is given to unacceptable projects, the reviewers will have to meet with the experimenters and instructor to help work out an acceptable solution. Once you have completed these requirements, you must meet briefly with the lab instructor or professor for approval before passing in the Proposal.
Step 3: Research Report:
Once you have your marked Proposal back with Final Approval, you are free to start. However, there is a good chance you will still need to tighten up a few methodological problems before you start running participants. Lab time will be put aside so that you will be able to discuss any difficulties with the instructor.
REMEMBER: Do not start running participants before getting Final Approval (see Approval Form).
You should start with a pilot study on a few participants to make sure your procedure works, to get rid of any flaws and to get practice so that it runs smoothly. Once completed, begin running participants. Do this as early as possible: before Spring Break is great, during Spring Break or the first two weeks after are OK; after that, it's getting close and a degree of panic would be justified. It takes longer than you would think to run participants.
You need to consider what statistical procedure you will use before you actually collect the data. If this is not well planned you may find that you have lots of data and no way to analyze them in a way that will answer your original question.
Note: You are not permitted access to the introductory subject pool as these projects would drastically deplete their numbers. If you require student samples, you will have to use convenient samples or if necessary get permission from individual professors to use students in their classes (to be determined with the lab instructor). Make sure these student subjects understand they are volunteering without bonus points if that it the case. Don't forget to thank the professor for giving you the time to run subjects.
If you need a classroom or any special equipment (e.g., stopwatches, computer programs), arrange it through the lab instructor.
Once your data are collected, you will need to meet with the lab instructor to go over the statistics and to make sure you are doing the analysis correctly.
A complete APA style report will be due at the end of term. Make sure you change all verb tenses from future to past when revising your Proposal. See grading sheet for Research Project for more details.
Step 4: Class Presentation:
You must present your project at the end of the term either in class or to your lab section. The presentations should be about 5-10 minutes long. Both partners need to participate to get credit. The presentations should include:
b) a brief description and justification of your design and methodology
c) a brief outline of the results (e.g., one figure/table - even if the data are not statistically significant)