EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH PROPOSAL GUIDELINES
Aim: For this proposal, you are required to design a study that can be carried out using the experimental method.
To do so:
1. Form a group with 3-4 of your class members (members from the same section). You cannot work alone.
2. Write the research question, aim, and directional hypothesis of your study.
· Find a research question that can be assessed using the experimental method. Read your textbook to learn about the details of the experimental method and examine the lecture notes.
· Then read about your topic (find articles from google scholar) to learn about your concept and write your aim and directional hypothesis. Further, provide a theoretical justification for your hypothesis. Your justification can also be based on past research.
Example of aim for the experimental method
· The aim of the current study was to examine whether exposure to TV violence leads to an increase in aggression level among young children.
Example of directional hypothesis for the experimental method
· It is hypothesized that young children who are exposed to TV violence will have a higher level of aggression than young children who are not exposed to TV violence.
3. Describe your sample
· Who will you be testing? Children, young adults, older adults? For example, if children, what age range? What will be the total number of participants in your study? If you have groups, how many participants in each group? Will there be inclusion and exclusion criteria? For instance, if your study is about the effects of sleep on driving behaviour an inclusion criterion would be that the participants have a driving license. Consider ceiling / floor effects when thinking about your inclusion and exclusion criterion (this will be explained in class).
4. Describe your pre-test measures
· Find past research that has examined your dependent variable and determine how your dependent variable can be assessed. In terms of assessment, for example, if your dependent variable is memory – how will you assess memory? Will you give participants a word list? How many words will your list contain? What will be the words? This information should be based on past research that has examined memory. If your participants are Turkish speaking, should the words be in Turkish?
5. Describe how you will undertake random allocation to groups
· Read your textbook to learn about random allocation to groups and state how you will carry out this procedure in your study.
6. Describe your manipulation
· Find past research that has also manipulated your independent variable. For example, if your independent variable is video game play, what type of game will you employ. Will it include aggressive content – is this ethical? What will be the duration of the video game training? If your training duration is too short maybe the training will not have an effect, and this will lead to a limitation of your study. All these decisions regarding your independent variable need to be based on past research.
7. Describe your post-test
· At post-test you need to assess your dependent memory again. If your dependent variable was memory, will you use the same word lists or an equivalent yet different word list. What would be the problem / limitation of using the same word list?
8. If your hypothesis were to be supported, describe your expected results.
· To be able to show support for your hypothesis the group results you obtain for the dependent variable before and after the manipulation need to be in a specific way. What should be the group results for your dependent variable before the manipulation and which group should you see a change after the manipulation? This change needs to be significant. For there to be a significant difference between the groups what should the p value be? Is the change expected at the pre-test or the post-test? Attend class to learn about the expected results.
In-text citations, paraphrasing, and References: In any part of your proposal where you have obtained information from past research, you need to provide an in-text citation and add that reference to the Reference List. Ensure that you paraphrase information obtained from past research. Direct quotes are not allowed. Formatting of in-text citations and references need to be in line with the APA format. For further information regarding APA formatting of assignments, paraphrasing, citations, reference lists, and how to avoid plagiarism see https://apastyle.apa.org/
At the end of your proposal, write a statement to indicate the involvement of each group member in designing the proposal.
group members are: emma, john and sarah. please break down the proposal into parts and assign a part to each member. ex all members helped deciding on the research question , emma wrote the aim, sarah worked on describing the sample, john helped with pre-test measures etc.
Due date: 7 March 2024, 11.59 pm.
