PSYC 515 – Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology II

 

Research: Intro and Methods

PSYC515

Research Project Overview

This collection of assignments will give you an opportunity to develop a research question, read published research to discern relevance to your project, choose the correct research design and analysis, collect data, run the statistical test, interpret the results, and present them in written form. The assignment is divided into multiple phases, with certain tasks due at different times throughout the course (see Table 1 for due dates and relevant files associated with each phase). It is very important to turn work in on time at each of the due dates, as the later sections of the lab depend on work performed in the earlier sections although for the Final Paper, it is expected that you will incorporate all of the feedback and suggested changes made by your instructor.

Please note you are NOT allowed to quote sources for any portion of this assignment. You can paraphrase when
necessary (note paraphrasing is NOT simply replacing a word or two) but are expected to synthesize when possible. All phases should be written succinctly using the guidelines provided in your assigned readings / presentations, and formatted using current APA conventions. Any references to APA Manual sections are referring to the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020), herein referred to as the “APA Manual”.

Table 1

Timeline and Relevant File Names for the Lab Project in PSYC 515

Module #	Assignment	Relevant Documents / Instructions
Module 1	Research Design 40 pts	Research Project Overview Research Project Survey Instructions Research Design Assignment Instructions
Module 2	(none)	Research Data Collection Instructions
Module 4	Introduction & Method with Survey and SPSS file 60 pts	Intro to Scientific Writing (Presentation) Survey Data Compilation Instructions Research Project Intro & Methods Assignment Instructions
Module 6	Discussion: Research Project Review 100 pts	Scientific Writing: Results and Discussion (Presentation) Discussion: Research Project Review Assignment Instructions
Module 8	Final Paper 100 pts	Final Paper (Presentation) Final Paper Assignment Instructions

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PSYC515

Research: Intro and Method Assignment Instructions

Overview

This is the first written component of your research project. Review all relevant files / presentations as listed in the
Research Project Overview and this document. This project will refine your graduate level writing abilities and allow you to practice scientific writing skills. It also requires you to locate and read many research articles over a specific topic, discern which are most relevant, and use them to provide a review of literature while simultaneously building an argument for your proposed research study. This type of writing takes many revisions, so do not wait until the last minute to begin work on this assignment. (You are turning in a “final version” – not a draft!).

Instructions

By this stage you should have already been approved to use your survey to collect data. You will now write the introduction and method sections of your research paper, transcribe your data to an SPSS file, and submit both for instructor feedback. Please read this document in its entirety before beginning this portion of your research project. There are three stages to this assignment as detailed below. This is the ONLY assignment in which you submit two separate files – you will also submit your SPSS data file within a single submission in Canvas. The entire assignment is worth a total of 60 points: up to 42 points are awarded based on correct content in both the word document and SPSS data file, and up to 18 points are awarded for structure in both the word document and SPSS data file. Submission instructions are reiterated at the bottom of these instructions.

The following stages are provided to help guide you through this assignment.

Stage 1: Read articles to locate the most relevant ones specific to your research project. You’ve already designed your survey based on previously validated scales or approved variables and copied the Reference entries from the Survey Instructions document. You can now locate those articles in the Jerry Falwell library to read to better understand those variables. (Note: for the first variable there was a citation – Hodge, 2003, Underwood, 2011, or Pargament et al., 2011; not all second variables had a reference provided).

In addition to the 1 – 2 articles used to validate your survey, you will need to find a minimum of FOUR additional articles that provide sufficient background to justify your research study. Thus, you will have a minimum of 5 – 6 articles discussed in your Introduction and included in your References for this phase. For the four articles you must find on your own:

· All should be from peer-reviewed journals. For a description of types of articles, please review Section 1 in the APA Manual.

· At least three of the articles should report primary, empirical, quantitative research; no more than one can be a literature review/theoretical/ or meta-analysis article. Discussion of the articles must include enough information to clearly identify what type of article is being discussed.

· All four articles should be used to provide context and justification for your study – thus, their relevance to your study must be clear. Each article does not have to be related to both of your chosen variables and they do not have to use the same scales as the ones you selected, but each should be clearly related to at least one of the constructs of interest in your study. All should be discussed in such as a way that methods and results are sufficiently described and relevance to your study is clear. Conclusions from the four studies you selected must form a foundation for understanding the merits of your study.

Stage 2: Write the following portions of your research paper: Introduction, Method, References, Appendix. Make sure you follow the APA guidelines for a
professional paper.
The following steps outline the systematic organization of the body within each of these sections.

1) Introduction: remember you use the title of the paper in title case, bold, and centered (2.11; Figure 2.4). Also include a running head and page numbers. Note both the title and running head should reflect your study’s topic – NOT that is it a phase or part of a class. You are already expected to be able to write at the graduate level in terms of grammar, syntax, and using your own words (no quotes or just switching out a few words – you must reword ideas and summarize other research). However, we are now also honing scientific writing skills. Thus, there is no page or word minimum. Be concise yet detailed. Do not be redundant or opinionated. There is a specific flow to all quantitative research articles. The body of your introduction should contain the following information IN THIS ORDER:

a. Frame the importance of the problem (3.4) – begin by clarifying the objective – whether it be theoretical, potential application, input for public policy, et cet..

b. Discuss at least 5 relevant articles (1 – 2 related to your survey; four selected by you).
Quotes are NOT allowed in this course – use your own words. This is to:

i. Provide a scope of the problem and its context

ii. Theoretical or practical implications

iii. Emphasize pertinent findings and major conclusions (make sure you use in-text citations and that all citations are included in the Reference section).

1. Describe similarities and differences among the research reviewed

2. Explain the relevance of each article to the proposed study

3. Discuss relevant methodological issues

c. Note: this section will be multiple paragraphs,
but it should NOT consist of an article per paragraph – use the articles you’ve chosen to provide an overview of the problem and ultimately, to justify your research idea. Always use a topic sentence to express the main idea for each paragraph (topic sentences rarely include citations). If the next paragraph does not flow easily, use a transition sentence at the end of the previous paragraph.

d. In the
final paragraph of your introduction (and NOT before this!), state the purpose and rationale for your proposed study.

i. State the problem (which is always a lack of information or contradictory findings in the field) and a rationale for further exploration. (This should be justified based on what you wrote in earlier paragraphs).

ii. End the Introduction by explicitly stating the alternate hypothesis (people do not state the null hypothesis in research articles, although remember that is what you are statistically testing!!). You also do not write the words “alternate hypothesis”. Rather, you can write something along the lines of “It is predicted that there is a relationship” or “It is hypothesized that there is a difference…”

iii. Remember “relationship” implies one type of statistical test whereas “difference” implies a different type of statistical test – so use the words to reflect what type of statistical test you’ll conduct!

2) Method: Continue with your use of proper formatting, noting that the Method does not start on a new page, rather it begins immediately after the last sentence in your introduction. Don’t forget to use the APA Manual as a guide. Level 2 headings for your Method section must include
(in this order and in APA format):

a. Participants –
include the number of participants, a description of the participants, and sampling procedures

b. Materials –
include a description of the survey questions used, including citations where appropriate (e.g., if you use spirituality you should cite Hodge, 2003). Don’t include assumed items (e.g., pencils to complete a survey).

c. Procedure –
summarizes where the study took place (e.g., church, small group, Facebook) and the experience of the participants in a detailed and organized manner – this will be very short.

d. Analysis –
state how the variables are operationally defined (e.g., responses to the seven questions affiliated with anxiety are averaged, ranging from 1 – 7, with higher numbers indicating greater anxiety), alpha value (we always use 0.05), what statistical test will be used to answer the research question (e.g., independent samples t-test), and what version of SPSS is being used to analyze the data. Hint: Due to the brief nature of the course, the statistical test is most likely one reviewed in the first few weeks of PSYC 515 that was covered also in PSYC 510.

3) References: 5-6 entries minimum following guidelines stated above. Use Sections 9 – 10 in the APA Manual for proper formatting.

4) Appendix: Include a copy of your approved survey in an Appendix as the last page of your single word document (see Section 2 in the APA Manual).

Stage 3: Data entry in SPSS

· Every single
question from your survey must be clearly labeled and entered into SPSS
in addition to your final calculated variables. Although you may not use all of this data in your analysis, it is imperative as it allows the instructor to ensure your calculations were correct.

· For instance, you may have six questions for the construct “spirituality”. However, none of these would be used in your SPSS analysis – you are to average them (per directions in the
Research Project Survey Instructions file from Module 1). In your SPSS data file, I would expect to see the individual answers to all six of these questions PLUS an averaged spirituality column. All columns must be labeled to clearly identify what they are related to (e.g, spirituality1; spirituality2; AveSpirituality). You will only use the “AveSpirituality” column for statistical analyses but all are required in this assignment to ensure the variable was correctly combined.
Failure to include all participant answers will result in a significant deduction of points on this assignment.

· Refer to the
Survey Data Compilation Instructions document in this week’s Module for an example of how to go from data collection to combining all surveys into SPSS for data analysis. This document has three completed example surveys and then pictures of how the data entry would look in SPSS in both Data and Variable Views.

· Note in this example, the survey is comprised of nine questions. All 9 questions would be individually represented in the SPSS file with descriptive names (NOT Q1, Q2, et cet). Since questions 3 – 9 in this example survey are about anxiety, they could be named Anxiety1, Anxiety2, et cet. However, all of these questions are concerning ONE construct – anxiety. In this instance, anxiety was calculated by totaling responses from all 7 questions related to anxiety and then multiplied by 2. Therefore, the SPSS data file for this assignment would need to have 10 columns of data (1 demographic, 1 for organizational religiosity, and 8 for anxiety).

Submission Instructions. You will be submitting TWO files:

1. Word document ( or x) containing an Introduction, Method, References, and Appendix (survey)

2. SPSS data file with all data from every question on the survey PLUS any reserve scored, summed, averaged, et cet variables (.sav)

Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.

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PSYC

5

1

5 WORKSHEET:
Factorial designs (Week 3)

Review of Material: How to conduct and present factorial designs using SPSS (Week 3)

Information from: Week 3 presentations and assigned readings in the e-book

Additional practice: Jackson ebook ch. 1

2

–Chapter

12

Exercise Q#

11

and Chapter 12 Study Guide – scroll down to “Self-test problems” Q#1

Note: this is an OPTIONAL worksheet to practice applying some of this week’s key concepts. Please make sure you complete all assigned readings and watch this week’s presentations before attempting the worksheet! Try to complete it on your own, then check your answers with the answer key details (at the end of the document).

**NOTE** because these are rather lengthy problems, the answers are provided below but are demonstrated step-by-step in Watch items for the corresponding module: week. Please attempt these problems on your own before watching the videos, or at least read the scenario before watching the videos!

Practice 1 – 3 x 3 (Two-way) ANOVA

A researcher is attempting to determine the effects of instructional method on learning the letters of the alphabet in young children. She found

15

children in each age group (2, 3, and

4

-year-olds) and randomly assigned them to a teaching strategy – learning the alphabet by recitation, identification, or by tracing. The number of letters correctly identified for each child is recorded below.

5

2

6

7

5

1

2

2

5

7

6

7

6

10

26

18

26

25

19

20

17

																																													Recite	Identify	Trace
2-year-olds						5				2		1
						7
								6	0
4
3-year-olds		20					11
23								8
22											10
	18	9
21
4-year-olds		25			26		17
16
15
	19	24
14

Practice 2 – 2 x 2 (or Two-way) Repeated Measures ANOVA

A researcher is attempting to determine the effects of practice and environment on a timed task. Participants in an experiment are given a computerized search task. They search a computer screen of various characters and attempt to find a particular character on each trial. When they find the designated character, they press a button to stop a timer. Their reaction time (in seconds) on each trial is recorded. Subjects each participate in 4 sessions – they practice for 2 or 4 hours in both quiet and noisy environments. The reaction time data for the 10 subjects who underwent all conditions appear below.

2 hours

4 hours

11

10

8

12

10

8

12

13

10

10

11

12

8

10

11

11

7

5

10

8

5

6

10

8

7

8

10

10

6

6

12

13

6

6

12

13

7

8

Quiet	Noisy
	2 hours		4 hours
					12
			13

Practice 3 – 2 x 3 Mixed Design ANOVA

A researcher is attempting to determine the effects of practice and gender on a timed task. Participants in an experiment are given a computerized search task. They search a computer screen of various characters and attempt to find a particular character on each trial. When they find the designated character, they press a button to stop a timer. Their reaction time (in milliseconds) on each trial is recorded. Subjects practice for 2, 4, or 6 hours across all three sessions (all participants complete all three sessions). The reaction time data for the 10 subjects (5 women / 5 men) appear here.

107

Women	Men
2 Hours	120	115
135	123
122	134
113	128
114	117
4 Hours	109	82
	107	86
105
89	108
73	95
6 Hours	75	53
57	65
78	87
62	69
74	85

ANSWER KEY for Factorial designs (Week 3)

Because these are rather lengthy, videos were created to walk you step-by-step through the process. Please watch the relevant videos to check your work (you can skip to the end to see if your results match mine if you think you solved them correctly!) Or, just watch the videos over the types you most struggle with! Please note you need to include the effect size for each main effect and interaction – although it is in the output in the videos, I did not include it in the video write-ups. They are shown here, demonstrated in this week’s SPSS presentation, and are included in the Helpful Hints document.

Practice 1 – 3 x 3 (Two-way) ANOVA shows how to run a factorial design when both factors are BS, and when you need to interpret post hoc analyses, including a significant interaction that requires you to “split” your data file to run additional post hoc analyses. How to create a line graph for a significant interaction is shown.

Independent variables and levels for each:

· BS factor: AGE (three levels – 2, 3, and 4 y/o)

· BS factor: STRATEGY (recite, identify, trace)

Dependent variable: number of correctly identified letters of the alphabet (SCALE scale of measurement)

Final write-up including the effect sizes:

Using a 3 x 3 ANOVA with the between subjects factor of age (2, 3, 4 y/o) and strategy (recite, identify, trace), on the number of correctly identified letters in the alphabet revealed a significant main effect of age F(2, 36) = 180.083, p<.001, Ƞp2 = 0.909, a significant main effect of strategy F(2, 36) = 41.312, p<.001, Ƞp2 = 0.697, and a significant Age x Strategy interaction F(4, 36) = 10.983, p<.001, Ƞp2 = 0.550. Post hoc analyses were conducted using one-way ANOVAs for each age group. For the 2 y/o group, both recite and identify strategies were more effective than trace (p = .003 and p = .018, respectively), although there was no difference between recite and identify strategies (p = .583). For the 3 y/o group, the recite strategy was more effective than both identify and trace strategies (p < .001) although there was no difference between the identify and trace strategies (p = .890). In the 4 y/o group, both recite (p = .015) and identify (p = .042) were more effective strategies compared to tracing, although there was no difference between recite and identify strategies (p = .837).

** if you do not see where/ how to get these results, please view “Watch: 3 x 3 BS ANOVA” in which I show you how (must have internet access): Caveat to the video: Please note you need to include the effect size for each main effect and interaction – although it is in the output in the videos I did not include it in the write-ups while I was making them. They are shown here AND are demonstrated in this week’s SPSS presentation.

Practice 2 – 2 x 2 (or Two-way) Repeated Measures ANOVA shows how to run a factorial design when both factors are WS, and you need to combine two columns within SPSS to be able to interpret a significant ME that is WS. The appropriate graph for a WS significant ME when you have two WS factors is also shown.

Independent variables and levels for each:

· WS factor: HOURS (two levels – 2 and 4 hours)

· WS factor: ENVIRONMENT (two levels – quiet and noisy)

Dependent variable: reaction time (in seconds) (SCALE scale of measurement)

Final write-up including the effect sizes:

A 2 x 2 Repeated Measures ANOVA was conducted for number of hours practiced (2 and 4 hours) and environment (quiet and noisy) on reaction time in a computerized search task. There was no main effect of hours F(1, 9) = 0.213, p = .656, Ƞp2 =.023 or Hour x Environment interaction F(1, 9) = 0.033, p = .859, Ƞp2 =.004. The main effect of environment was significant F(1, 9) = 58.418, p < .001, Ƞp2 =.867. As shown in Figure 1, participants responded slower in quiet environments.

(note no post hoc needed since df = 1)

** if you do not see where/ how to get these results, please view “Watch: 2 x 2 WS ANOVA” in which I show you how (must have internet access): Caveat to the video: Please note you need to include the effect size for each main effect and interaction – although it is in the output in the videos I did not include it in the write-ups while I was making them. They are shown here AND are demonstrated in this week’s SPSS presentation.

Practice 3 – 2 x 3 Mixed Design ANOVA shows how to run a factorial design analysis when one factor is BS and the other is WS. The appropriate graph for a significant main effect of a WS factor (when there is only one WS factor) is shown.

Independent variables and levels for each:

· BS factor: GENDER (two levels – male and female)

· WS factor: TIME (three levels – 2, 4, or 6 hours of practice)

Dependent variable: reaction time (in ms) (SCALE scale of measurement)

Final write-up including the effect sizes:

A 2 x 3 Mixed Design ANOVA was conducted to determine if gender (male or female) and number of hours practiced (2, 4, or 6 hours) affect reaction time in a computerized search task. There was no main effect of gender F(1, 8) = 0.064, p = .807, Ƞp2 =.008 or Gender x Hour interaction F(2, 16) = 0.126, p = .882, Ƞp2 =.016. The main effect of hours practiced was F(2, 16) = 77.854, p < .001, Ƞp2 =.907. As shown in Figure 1, participants reacted faster with more practice (pairwise comparisons were all significant, p < .001).

** if you do not see where/ how to get these results please view “Watch: 2 x 3 Mixed Design ANOVA” in which I show you how (must have internet access): Caveat to the video: Please note you need to include the effect size for each main effect and interaction – although it is in the output in the videos I did not include it in the write-ups while I was making them. They are shown here AND are demonstrated in this week’s SPSS presentation.

NOTE: There are still opportunities for extra practice! Try completing Jackson ebook ch. 12 –Chapter 12 Exercise Q#11 and Chapter 12 Study Guide – scroll down to “Self-test problems” Q#1

SPSS

Research: Intro and Methods

Please don’t forget that the Introduction and Method sections of your professional research paper is due this week! Make sure you’ve edited it and have spent substantial time thinking about how to best organize and present these sections. Remember, scientific writing markedly differs from creative writing. You need to make sure all articles are relevant to at least one of your variables, and that the relevance to your study is clear and explicit. (This means you should expect to read MANY articles but only include those that are relevant).  Note having tangential or irrelevant articles will result in a LOSS of points. Also note that no one ever includes titles of studies or papers. It is considered verbose and unnecessary. That being said, do make sure to use topic sentences and transitions, and do not discuss one article per paragraph – rather, use the Introduction to build a case for your study design by using an articulate review of literature. You hopefully noticed the very standardized flow for an introduction when reading articles as you searched for those relevant to your study. However, I also explicitly outlined this organization in the instructions for the assignment. For maximum points, make sure you follow the directions.

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