AP Psychology
Research Projects
Overview: This project is your opportunity to pick a
topic you’re fascinated by, do original research or build on research that has
been done, and write a college level research paper.
1.
You will need to
pick a topic to start researching. This can be the most difficult part of the
assignment. I suggest you look through your textbook until you find a theory, a
study, or a psychological question that you find fascinating.
2.
Once you have
selected a topic, you will need to start doing background research. Start by
looking up the references in the back of your textbook that seem useful. When
you have finished your preliminary research, you will write a literature
review, summarizing and explaining previous work in your area. This should make
up 1 ½ -2 pages of your final paper.
3.
After the
literature review, you’ll develop your research question and hypotheses. Your
research question should be based on your literature review. Your hypotheses
should be predictions about your research question based on what you found in
your literature review.
4.
Based on your
research question, you will design your study. You should design a study that
will collect the data you need to answer your research question and test your
hypotheses. Make sure your research design matches your research question and
hypotheses. You will write a study proposal that will be presented to the class
and myself, to make sure your research designs are ethical and valid. Your
study design will later be described in the Methods section of your paper.
5.
You will do the
research, collect the data, analyze it, and figure out how to best present your
data in tables and graphs in the Results section of your paper.
6. You’ll write your preliminary conclusions based on the
literature review and your data. You’ll explain whether the data supports your
hypotheses and how you answer your research question, given your data and the
background research. This analysis goes in the Discussion section of your paper.
You
will present their projects to the class in a symposium format. You have plenty
of time to present your project in an effective way. The grade includes not
only the research report (in APA style), but how well you present your research
(scoring rubric attached).
Included in this packet:
- APA Organization for Research Papers
- How to write the Introduction (Literature Review)
Section
- How to Write the Methods Section
- Ethical Considerations
- Analyzing Data
- How to write the Results Section
- How to write the Discussion Section
- How to do your references page
- Final Project Grade Sheet
APA Organization for Research Papers:
[note: this is just an outline - see online references
for complete instructions on APA style]
|
I. Title Page
-
Running Head
-
Title of Study
-
Authors
-
Instructor’s Name
-
Date
II. Body
Literature Review
-
General introduction, why the topic is important
or interesting
-
Body paragraphs summarizing and citing research
-
Explanations of how the studies relate to your
research question
-
Conclusion paragraph explaining the deficiency
in the research and ending with your specific research question and hypotheses
Method
-
Participants
o
population
o
sample (and assignment, if needed) with
justification
-
Procedure
o
Step by step description of your research plan
including (but not limited to):
§
Informed consent
§
Variables
§
Operational definitions
§
Procedure
§
Materials
Results
-
Demographic table of participants including
descriptive statistics
-
Text descriptions of tables, charts, graphs
-
Tables, charts, and graphs for all results
-
Descriptive and inferential statistics
Discussion
-
Brief summary of relevant background literature
-
Relationship between research question and
results; conclusions about hypothesis using background theory (one paragraph
per result)
-
Identified problems with design or procedure
(confounding variables), including a discussion of how you would change your
methodology next time based on this pilot study
-
Future directions research might take with specific
research suggestions
-
How findings contribute to body of knowledge –
re-examine background theory in light of your results and conclude
III. References (in APA style)
IV. Appendices (all materials
used in study)
Adapted from: Martin, D.W.
(1996). Doing Psychology Experiments (4th ed.).
Pacific Grove , CA
How to write the Introduction (Literature Review) Section:
If you decide
to go to college and you end up doing an honors thesis (or a masters thesis or
a dissertation, etc.), you will have to do a literature review. This means you go out and you find all the
sources that talk about your specific topic. I’m asking you to do a miniature literature review for your
psychology project. I don’t expect you to find everything published on your
topic, but I do want you to find enough background research so that you know
what you’re talking about. Here’s how to do that:
1.
Start with your textbook. Look at anything in
your text that relates at all to your theory/study/question, make sure you understand
it, and check the ‘Suggestions for Further Reading” part at the end of the
chapter to see if there are books there you should read.
2.
Look up all the references (the authors’ names
in parentheses) from the textbook that relate to your topic. You can find these
in the References section in the back of your textbook.
3.
Check my shelves of other psych textbooks for
other references.
4.
Go to the library and talk with Mrs. Nielson,
our librarian. Be polite, and she’ll probably have ideas for you. She is incredibly
knowledgeable about how to do research.
5.
Use the on-line databases we have access to.
Find any relevant information you can from academic databases (we’ll learn how
to use these in class).
6.
Go to local libraries. You’ll find different
information at each library.
After you get your sources, use
them to write the introduction to your paper.
Here are some things to keep in
mind:
• Your introduction should
explain why your topic is important and/or interesting. Describe why you chose
the topic, but remember that you can not use the first person “I.” Your
introduction should end with your research question.
• You want to present the
background research in an organized way. Make piles of the research, categories
of research. Turn each pile into a separate paragraph. You want to use topic
sentences, explain and cite each study, and explain what the study concludes.
• The overall goal is to demonstrate the need for your research. This is
called the “deficiency model” - you are showing the studies that have been
done. In the last paragraph of your literature review, explain why your study
is needed because the studies you found are missing a key point.
• You should end your
introduction by explaining the purpose of your study (your research question)
and your hypothesis or hypotheses.
• Cite each source after a quote
or paraphrase in parentheses (Author’s last name, year) AND make sure you have
the full source written down so you can make your bibliography later (starting
it now is a good idea!)
Specific Research Question and Design
Research Question:
After you do some background
research on your topic, you should be able to develop your research
question. This question should be based
on some issues you identify in the background research. An example: you look
through your textbook and figure out that you are really interested in the
concept of conformity. You do some background research and find that not much
is known about whether children or adolescents are more likely to conform. You
decide you test this idea. You may develop a research question like: “Are
pre-adolescents or adolescents more likely to conform to a group standard set
by their peers?” You may develop a hypothesis like: Adolescents are more likely
than pre-adolescents to conform to a decision made by a group of their same-age
peers.
[Note: do not research this
question. This has already been researched, and is only an example.]
When you are developing your
question and hypothesis, think about these questions:
1)
Why are you interested in this topic? What
interesting unanswered issues did you discover in your background research?
What do you want to find out?
2)
What psychological theory or theories help
explain the answer to your question? What do these theories predict about the
answer to your question?
3)
What hypothesis (or hypotheses) would help you
test if the theory explains the answer to your question accurately or
inaccurately?
4)
How will you test your hypotheses, or gather the
needed research results, to answer your question?
How to Write
the Methods Section:
Choosing a Research method:
You should choose a research
method that matches your research question and hypothesis. We’ll talk about
this in class, but in general you need to design a study that can actually get
you the data you need to answer your question. If you want to prove whether a
certain variable causes a change in another variable, you need to do an
experiment. If you want to know about peoples’ attitudes on a topic, you can do
a survey.
You need to choose research methods you can use to answer your research
question. You need to have a rationale for why you choose a particular
method. For all research methods, you need to describe and justify your:
1)
population
2)
sample (and
assignment, if appropriate)
3)
variables
4)
operational
definitions
5)
materials
6)
data analysis
(what comparisons you will make)
7)
how you will make
your final conclusions (what will you have to see to decide one way or the
other about your research question?)
Writing the Methods Section
This is probably the easiest section of your paper to write!
Your goal in this section of the paper is to describe how
you did your research in detail. The
idea is that someone could read your paper and replicate (re-do) your research
exactly as you did it just by the details you include in this section. Here are
the elements to include:
Participants: In
this section you need to describe who your participants were. Not names of
course, but your:
-
population (with justification)
-
sample (and assignment to groups if you did
that) (with justification)
Look to your background research to figure out how to
justify anything in your methodology.
Procedure:
In this section you should describe step by step exactly how you did your
research. The steps in your experiment or interview or case study, etc. Include
all relevant materials (like surveys, testing instruments, informed consent
forms, etc.) at the end of your paper as an Appendix. Start by labeling the
first one as “Appendix A” then go from there. Think of this section as a recipe:
Explain each step of what you did in order in as much detail as a person would
need to get a good idea of how you performed your research.
Somewhere in this description, you need to explain your
variables and operational definitions (with justification).
Make sure you don’t start to
present your findings or conclusions, save those for later sections. Your
methods section should have all the above included.
Ethics:
General Ethical
Considerations for Research with Human Participants:
1. Never physically endanger
your research subjects in any way.
2. Never subject them to any
sort of emotional or psychological distress.
3. Never embarrass them in any way (if this is
part of the experimental intervention, re-design your research).
4. Always protect their dignity
and freedom of choice (including the freedom to leave your study at any time of
their own choosing, regardless of reason).
5. Always treat them as you
would wish to be treated (or as you would wish your children or your aging
parents to be treated).
[pg.16, R. Barker Russell, Conducting Meaning Experiments, SAGE 1994]
Other General Ethical
Guidelines for Human Participants:
1. Informed Consent - Researchers need to inform participants they are
involved in a psychological study. Researchers do not need to divulge the
ultimate purpose of the study, but they need to provide enough information so
that participants know if they want to be involved or not. In naturalistic
observation studies, researchers do not need informed consent if the behavior
was observed in a public place and collecting the data did not interfere with
the participants. You need consent of parents if you are working with young
children.
2. Confidentiality - Researchers must make every effort to ensure
that participants cannot be identified. The publication and presentation should
not identify individual participants.
3. Debriefing - Researchers need to inform participants after the
study of the real nature of the research and provide a way for participants to
receive a copy of the results of the study.
BE SURE TO INCLUDE
ALL INFORMED CONSENT, CONFIDENTIAL NOTICES, AND DEBRIEFING PAGES IN YOUR
APPENDIX!
How to write the Results Section:
The third section of your paper!
You’re almost done!
First, you need to
make sure you understand how to make charts and graphs using a spreadsheet, and
how to place them into a word processing document. So analyze your data, make
the appropriate charts, graphs and tables, and then you’re ready to write this
section.
Your goal in this
section is to tell the reader about your data as clearly as possible. You want
to communicate all of your data (unless part of your procedure didn’t work -
you don’t have to write about data that you weren’t able to gather because of
problems in your procedure). Here are some steps to follow:
1) You should start this section
with a demographics table including descriptive statistics. Explain how many
people were in each group, and give relevant descriptive statistics. For
example:
|
Gender
|
Mean score
|
Standard deviation
|
|
Males
|
35.1
|
5.3
|
|
Females
|
37.2
|
10.8
|
2) Look at your data and figure
out how to best present it to your reader. Do you have qualitative data or
quantitative? How are you organizing the data into categories? What method of
presentation will be the most clear and useful to the reader? What sort of table
should you use?
3) Draw up rough drafts of your
tables and put the data in the categories. Doing a rough draft will help you
figure out how much room you need in each section. Use a spreadsheet program to
create a table, chart, or graph for your data; if you don’t know how to use one
yet, find someone who does.
4) Place the charts and tables
into the results section, and write a text description under each one. Describe
the chart, graph or table in words. Tell the reader what they are looking
at.
More details about Qualitative data
• If you are reporting
qualitative data, explain what categories you discovered that best fit the
voices of your participants. Explain what each category heading means; your
definition of the heading. Explain the rationale behind the categories. Why did
you organize the data in this way instead of another way?
• Make a table of these
categories, including any relevant groups of people and quotations that best
represent that category. Include this table in your results section For
example, if you interviewed males and females about their attitude towards the
dress code at CEHS, you might develop a table like this:
|
|
Hate dress code
|
Like dress code
|
Indifferent to dress code
|
|
Males
|
It’s totally stupid and no one
even enforces it
|
It’s better for the school to
this than have uniforms
|
I don’t really care – it
doesn’t bother me
|
|
Females
|
I get hassled for my clothes
all the time and they’re just what I like to wear
|
I don’t like to feel pressured
to dress a certain way, and the code helps that
|
I don’t really even notice it
|
• You can also include notes
about data that did not fit into the categories but seemed significant or
interesting. Example:
“Significant
quotations from the group interviews are listed in Table 1. Note that
categories used represent different types of attitudes about IQ testing:
Skeptical, Questioning, Ambivalent, Hostile, and Accepting. The vast majority
of participant responses fit into these categories, indicating that the
categories reflect participant attitudes well.”
Final note: Re-read your results
section and make sure you don’t make any conclusions about your data yet.
That’s what you do in the next section (Discussion). Resist the temptation to
conclude! Wait for the next section!
How to write the Discussion Section:
The discussion section should be
the most enjoyable section to write. This is your chance to interpret your
results and explain what it all means.
·
Start
this section with a short paragraph reminding us of the relevant background
research and your research question. Basically, summarize your literature
review in one paragraph at the beginning of the discussion section. Cite each
source again.
·
Answer
your research question by concluding about your hypothesis (or hypotheses).
Do your data support or contradict your hypothesis? What does all this mean
about your research question? You should discuss each finding in a different
paragraph. In each paragraph, remind us of the finding, explain why you think
it turned out that way, and relate the result to relevant background research.
“In
your introduction you described what the body of knowledge consisted of and
where it needed to be expanded. Your
results section then provided a new building block. You now have to describe how the new block
fits into the structure and how the new structure differs from the old. Thus, the discussion section is the place where you update the body of
knowledge with your results.
In
most cases the introduction section will have identified competing theories or
stated hypotheses predicting the outcome of the experiment. In the discussion section you should briefly
review these theories and hypotheses and discuss whether your results support
or refute them. If more than one theory or hypothesis can explain your results,
you might suggest ways of testing these in future experiments.
This
section is also the place to qualify your results, if necessary, and to
speculate on the reasons for unpredicted findings (as long as you keep your
speculations short and identify them as such).
However, you should not waste the reader’s time explaining effects that
were not statistically significant. Only
in rare cases should negative results be interpreted as due to anything other
than chances.
Particularly
if you are doing applied work, you should use the discussion section to point
out the practical value of your results - how and where they can be used and
how they might change current applied procedures.
Finally, you can use the discussion section to make suggestions
about the direction of future research.
Now that you have discussed the new state of the body of knowledge, you
may be able to suggest where new expansion should take place.” - David Martin Doing Psychology Experiments
After you
discuss each finding thoroughly, add at least 3 more paragraphs:
1)
Discuss the confounding variables involved in
your study, and explain what effect you think each variable had on your
results. Explain what you would do differently next time (remember, this is a
pilot study) and how you would modify your methodology to fix any problems.
2)
Discuss what researchers in the future should
work on regarding this topic. Explain specifically what research needs to be
done and why
3)
Add a final paragraph summarizing all your work
and your conclusions about your research question
How to do your
References page:
[Note: You do not need to label
your references as “Books” or “Journal Articles.”]
Books:
Freud, S. (1961). The ego and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete
psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 3-66). London : Hogarth Press
Anonymous or unknown author
(common in newspapers):
Caffeine linked to mental
illness. (1991, July 13). New York Times,
pp. B13, B15.
World Wide Web page:
Bixley, T. S. (1995)
Sentient microfilaments Home Page.[On-line]. Available:
http://www.microfilaments.com/consciousness/synchronicity/quantum tube.html.
Group or institutional
authors:
Journal article:
Guenzel, Nick (1996, Autumn) Altruism in Three States. Whitman Journal of Psychology, (5)1, 67-73
Letter to the editor:
O'Neill, G. W. (1992, January). In support of DSM-III [Letter to the
editor]. APA Monitor, p. 4-5.
Magazine article:
Gardner, H. (1991, December). Do
babies sing a universal song? Psychology
Today, pp. 70-76.
Newsletter article:
Brown, L.S. (1993, Spring). My research with orangs. The Psychology Department Newsletter, pg.3
Pamphlet:
Just Say No Foundation. (1992).
Saving our youth. (9th ed.) [Brochure]. Washington ,
DC
SCORING RUBRIC
SCORING RUBRIC
|
Literature
Review Section:
Introductory
paragraph, including thesis (research question) 5
Body
paragraphs – analysis of research, with explanation 10
Overall
organization, transitions, 5
purpose statement (research question)
Conclusion
paragraph, including explanation of deficiency 5
General issues in the paper:
Neatness
(spelling, grammar, transitions, APA format) 5
|
Grade: _____________
|
|
Methods Section:
Clearly
describes and justifies participants and selection 5
Clearly
describes and justifies research method 5
Clearly
describes procedure referring to any 10
necessary attachments in appendices
General issues in the paper:
Neatness
(spelling, grammar, transitions, APA format) 5
|
Grade: _____________
|
|
Results Section:
Demographic
table 5
Clear
presentation of data through appropriate graphs, tables 10
with text explanations
General issues in the paper:
Neatness
(spelling, grammar, transitions, APA format) 5
Discussion Section:
Paragraph
summarizing relevant background research
5
1
para. per finding that discusses each "finding" thoroughly, 10
referring to appropriate
background research
Discussion
of possible confounding variables, fixes
5
Recommendations
for future research 5
Conclusions
paragraph
General issues in the paper:
Neatness
(spelling, grammar, transitions, APA format) 5
|
Grade: _____________
|
|
Overall Quality of the research
performed:
Appropriate
method chosen for your research question 5
Variables
identified, operationally defined, carefully measured 5
Ambition:
evidence of effort in amount and quality of data 5
Procedure
of research 20
(run without serious confounding variables
interfering with results)
Presentation: [no
credit if not prepared on the date due]
Explains:
Background research 5
Methods 5
Results 5
Conclusions 5
Presented
in a smoothly running, creative, 20
interesting way for the class
(audio-visuals,
charts, well-dressed, overheads,
whatever best
presents the material)
|
Grade: __________
|
