Purpose & Inspiration: In addition to developing the collaborative, cognitive, and communication skills needed to conduct and professionally present an original, ethical psychological experiment, you will also develop your self-insight, learn to creatively deal with "stuckness" in a project, manage your time, and synthesize and gather information to formulate and defend an argument.  These are valuable life skills, no matter where you work or live in God's Kingdom. Now, we have a lot to accomplish in one semester, so here are some things to watch out for:

• You may feel overwhelmed.  Our many deadlines should keep your work on track-not kill you-and you'll have some scheduled consultation time with me.  Please feel free to talk to me.
• You may feel frustrated with the many new and difficult concepts. I want to help you learn, so please keep asking questions and hang in there - some concepts take time to grasp.
• You will receive a lot of critical feedback. You will certainly receive a lot of feedback: I will praise your accomplishments and will raise the bar a little each time you turn in a draft to help you continue learning. Try to learn something from the feedback and not take it personally - you can't become a good sailor if you just sail on calm waters (not that you want to be a sailor, but you get the point).
• You may be tempted to cheat - plagiarism, making up data, peeking on tests, etc.  Don't do it.  As people of integrity before God, we must avoid dishonesty. Talk to me and your classmates if you're feeling tempted to cheat and we can help hold you accountable.  As you know, because of the serious nature of academic dishonesty, any such behavior will result in Fs on the particular assignment or test, and could even result in failing the class - which means you don't graduate.  Don't do it.  Ask for help instead from your classmates, from me, from residence life staff, a counselor, etc.

Choosing a Partner (Authorship):  Most research, like most of life, is done collaboratively. Therefore, you will work with a research partner. Choose your partner carefully (i.e., think about your work style and personal standards for excellence), as no "divorces" are granted, both authors receive the same grades for what's handed in, and some interpersonal conflict is virtually inevitable.  I am happy to give you suggestions for a suitable research partner and help you work through conflicts.

Introduction Draft #1 (due September 10) (top)
See chapters 3 & 6 in your Martin text for getting topic ideas and searching the literature; for more ideas, see abstracts of experiments from previous semesters (see me for hard copies of the research papers). Some other comments about this assignment:

• You may NOT do a study involving personal space or studying with music as I am heartily sick of these topics.  (Sorry!)
• If you have an original research idea, you won't find literature on your exact topic - that's what makes your  idea original.
• Your experiment must include two independent variables: at least one manipulated IV and another IV that is either manipulated or "natural" (e.g., gender, self-esteem).  Keep this constraint in mind when considering a topic, as you must be able to randomly and ethically assign participants to the conditions of the manipulated IV.
• The topic/references assignment is a first draft of your introduction and reference sections. The more complete and detailed it is, the better position you are in when you revise it for your introduction. 

Requirements:

• In about 3-5 (typed, double-spaced) paragraphs, make a supported argument that some human behavior/attitude (your DV) may be influenced by some situational variable(s) (your IVs) and why that would be the case (theories to explain the proposed cause/effect relationship).
• Use at least 4 properly-cited primary/scholarly references to support your argument.  For this assignment only, you may reference sources for which you only have the abstracts; your introduction and other sections require citations to references for which you have read the entire article.
• Include an APA-style title page and references section.
• Check your paper for Common Writing Errors (CWE); your returned paper may include marginal notes like "see CWE #7b." 
• Evaluation criteria are shown below. Remember to keep your returned Intro #1 draft to be turned in with your final paper - I like to see how you've progressed over the semester.

Introduction #2 & Method #1 (due Oct 1); Peer Review (due Oct 10 by 1pm): (top)
After your topic has been approved, read more literature to narrow your topic, develop a context for your study, and get some ideas about your methodology (see also chapters 6 & 7 in Martin and Dordt's reference librarians for help).

Intro & Method #1 Requirements:

• Your introduction is an extended/revised version of your topic & references paper (not a totally new document).  This version is normally 3-4 pages long and includes a more developed argument than your topic/references paper. Remember that the topic of your introduction is normally the dependent variable, even if you are personally more interested in the IV or the participant population (e.g., kids).  The introduction section ends with your hypothesis.
• Pointers for your method section:
  • Start with what other researchers on your topic have done - can you use the same tasks or questionnaire that someone else used?
  • Decide who will be your study participants (e.g., Dordt students, children, senior citizens).  Note that for each level of the manipulated IV, you will need at least 15 participants (so, 3 levels of an IV requires at least 45 participants; if you have a 2x3 design, you'll need at least 2x3x15 = 90 participants).
  • Decide what materials or confederates you will need to obtain or create (e.g., written instructions, props, videotapes); if you'll use a confederate, consider how to train him/her or how you'll keep multiple confederates as similar as possible
  • Decide how and where you will collect your data (e.g., in groups or individually; in the REC center or the mall or a classroom)
  • Write the Method section and your hypothesis in the past tense (your final paper will be in past tense)
     
• Submit 1 hard copy and e-mail to me of your APA-style introduction, method #1 section, title and references page; check the CWE checklist for errors.
  • Note that you will need at least 7 primary/scholarly references and at least 10 references in total for your final paper (a maximum of two sources from the web).
  • Not that you would do this, but papers with any amount of plagiarism (whether intended or not, whether a section draft or your final paper) will receive a grade of F and the incident will be reported in writing to the Student Life Committee chair (see the student handbook for more details).  The key to avoiding plagiarism is in making SURE you have either put someone's idea entirely into your own words (and you reference the author and year of the source) OR use a direct quote and include all 4 required elements (quotation marks, author, year, and page number); APA style strongly prefers the former option.

Evaluation criteria are shown below. Keep your returned Introduction & Method #1 draft and the peer reviews you receive to be turned in with your final paper.

Peer Review: E-mail your review to me by 1:00 on October 10; see Writing Peer Reviews for more information and a sample review.  Your review will be evaluated based on your ability to identify conceptual and structural problems in the paper and to make appropriate suggestions for improvement.

Brown Bag Meeting (October 15) (top)
"Brown Bags" are informal meetings where colleagues discuss their research over lunch (thus the strange title for the meeting). Participants briefly present their work, and colleagues ask questions or make suggestions for improvement. So, our Brown Bag gives you feedback from classmates and other psychology profs. Each research team will give a 4-5 minute verbal overview of their research question, theoretical and empirical context for the study, and the proposed design and methodology.  Your listeners will have about 10 minutes to ask you questions or comment on your ideas; take notes!  You can also ask for advice about some aspect of your study; this is your time to get the help you need.

Method Section #2 (due October 22) (top)
The second draft of your method section helps you consider a number of details needed in planning a good experiment. Here are some pointers:

• Control & Measurement: Carefully think about your control group, controls for threats to validity, how the IV(s) will be manipulated, and how you are operationally defining your variables
• Participants: Decide who will be your study participants (e.g., Dordt freshmen, pre-school children, senior citizens) and how you will recruit them
• Materials: Decide exactly what materials you will need to obtain or develop (e.g., written instructions, props, videotapes) and any dimensions or descriptions (e.g., 2-min videotape; 4 x 6m projected image, 3.5m x 5m room). The Psychology Department can cover reasonable, pre-approved costs for materials (submit receipts to me).
• Pilot study: Decide exactly how and where you will collect your data; do a pilot study to help you think through some details
• Confederate(s): If you'll use a confederate, think through his/her training; if using more than one, consider how to make them as comparable as possible.  Describe them in the materials sub-section.
• Ethics: Make sure that your methodology abides by ethical standards and consider how you'll debrief and educate your participants
• Writing: Write this section in the past tense (this makes it easier to revise after you've collected data)

• One hard copy of your APA-style Method Section #2; please include your hypothesis at the top of the first page and survey materials as an appendix
• One hard copy of all other written experimental materials: any instructions to participants, stimulus pictures, questionnaires, filler tasks
• One hard copy of a description of your debriefing procedures - see Post-data Collection, below, for some tips
• Two hard copies of the Informed Consent and Debriefing forms; one copy of each should be attached to your IRB cover form
• Two hard copies of your completed (and signed) IRB cover form

Evaluation criteria are shown below. Remember to keep your returned Method #2 section and attachments to be turned in with your final paper.

Recruiting Participants & Collecting Data (after Method #2 approved) (top)
Once your study is approved, it's time to collect data! Give me materials for photocopying 12+ hours in advance so you don't have to pay for that; also submit receipts for pre-approved costs.  Here are some tips for recruiting participants and collecting your data.

• To reserve a room on campus for collecting data, e-mail Bonnie Dekkers in Student Services at bdekkers@dordt.edu (depending on what rooms or times you want, she may refer you to Karen Klein in the Registrar's Office). Be very organized and professional, explaining exactly when you need the room(s) for conducting your Psychology 366 experiment.
• To recruit college student participants:
• Create sign-up sheets with your study title, the times and dates and location of your study, and any limiting conditions (e.g., left-handed females only).  Provide enough spaces for the minimum number of students you need plus about 15% (the no-show rate is about 15%, and it's far better to have too many than too few participants). It's wise to have students include their e-mail address so you can send them a reminder of the study time/place.
• Talk to Profs. Sandbulte, Clevering, and Christians about visiting their General, Social, Lifespan Psych classes to recruit participants.
• Go to the classes to describe your study and explain/pass around the sign-up sheet (the prof can collect the sign-up sheet at the end of the hour and leave it for you in the psych office pod). If you cannot attend the classes in person, the professor  may agree to deliver your description for you -- but you'll probably get more interested subjects and better show-up rates if you do this in person.
• If you only want a certain type of participant (e.g., left-handed men), say so both verbally and on the sign-up sheet
• To recruit children:
  • If you'll be conducting the study at a school or a day care center, you need to contact the principal or director to discuss (a) the study, (b) how it will impact the children and the teachers/caregivers (e.g., amount of time missed from class, disruption of classroom), and (c) the expected benefits to the school or kids.  It's worth asking a prof or a parent of young kids to help you refine your presentation or to look over your informed consent document from a parent's perspective.
  • You must design an informed consent form that both the parent and the child can sign.  Take great care to consider the concerns of protective parents and work hard to give as much jargon-free information as you can about the study.
• Data collection tips:
  • Expect that you will have to throw out some data because something went really wrong (e.g., your timer broke) or you needed to change your procedure (e.g., what you did with the first three participants totally flopped).  A pilot study is a truly excellent idea.
  • Expect some participant glitches (e.g., no-shows, people who come late, people who don't follow instructions); plan how you will deal with these situations.
  • If you're running a group of participants, make sure that no one leaves before the debriefing.
  • Take digital pictures of your confederates, stimulus materials, room or anything else that would help your conference presentation audience understand your study; make sure to get written permission if photographing any people - you'll use these pictures in your conference presentations.
• Post-data collection & debriefing:
• Carefully debrief the participants; you can give an overview similar to your Brown Bag presentation.  Also ask them questions about whether they guessed your hypothesis, what they thought during the study and what might be improved or changed, etc.  Ask them not to disclose the purpose or details of your study until all of your data are collected (give a date  in mid-November) because that information would change future participants' behaviors.
• Write an ID number on every participant's data (questionnaire, survey packet, observations record, etc.).
• Take notes about how each experimental session went and which participants were in each session (use ID numbers).
• Take notes about any unexpected events or differences you observed between experimental sessions. These notes will be invaluable to you when revising your procedure section and writing the discussion section.
• Give your Informed Consent forms to me ASAP - I will keep these on file for you.

Results & Discussion Sections (due Nov 18) (top)
Congratulations -- you've collected your data! Now your data must be coded, cleaned, analyzed, graphed, and interpreted. After checking the CWE checklist, bring 3 hard copies of your APA-style Results & Discussion sections, which should include a Figure Captions page and a figure or two of the effect of your IV(s) on your DV. Two classmates and I will review your section in class and offer immediate feedback; evaluation criteria are shown below. Remember to keep your returned draft to be submitted with your final paper.

Full Draft (due Nov 20); Peer Reviews (due Nov 25) (top)
Submit three hard copies of your full APA-style paper, including any questionnaire(s) you used as an Appendix. This draft is not a sloppy, slapped-together paper, but the best work of which you are capable; double-check the CWE checklist to make sure you've avoided common writing errors. Your paper must be well written and should reflect the feedback you've received so far on your various section drafts. Remember to keep your returned full draft and peer reviews to be submitted with your final paper.

Peer review: Your paper will be peer-reviewed and you will individually peer-review another paper. Your peer review will be evaluated based on your ability to identify both conceptual and structural problems in the paper and to make appropriate suggestions for improvement.  E-mail your peer review to me.

Conference Program Information (due Nov 20 by 5pm) (top)
Email me the following information for inclusion in the research conference program:

• conference presentation type preference (Powerpoint or poster)
• author(s) names
• paper title
• paper abstract
• a 2-3 sentence biography of each researcher (major/minor, hometown, future educational/career/family/world travel plans)

Final Paper (due Friday, Dec 5 by 4pm) (top)

In a folder or large envelope, submit:

• 2 hard copies of your full APA-style paper (one for my files and one to be graded and returned to you)
• printouts of your SPSS output
• all section drafts (topic & refs, intro & method #1 w/peer reviews, method #2 and attachments, results & disc w/ peer reviews, full draft w/ peer reviews)

• Your paper will not be accepted if there are more than an average of 2 departures from standard written English per page (spelling, typos, punctuation, verb forms, verb tense, verb-subject agreement, etc.).  This is a formal, polished paper for which you should have no silly mistakes.
• Papers that include any amount of plagiarism or are based on falsified data will receive a grade of F and will be reported to the Student Life Committee.  If you have a particularly low grade in the course already, this may cause you to fail the course and perhaps not graduate. 

Conference Presentation (3:30-5pm on Dec 10 in the Eckardt Lounge) (top)
Dordt's Psychology Department hosts a research conference each fall to give you an opportunity to professionally present your work to the campus community.  You are also required to present your research at the annual meeting of the Siouxland Undergraduate Social Sciences Research Conference (normally held the 3rd or 4th Thursday in April). This requirement must be met or your course grade will be changed.

• You may give either a Powerpoint presentation (10-15 minutes) or a poster presentation (a 4' x 6' visual display of your project that you stand next to for 45 minutes)
• You will give a practice presentation during class on December 9 (class may run late).
• If you choose to give a Powerpoint presentation, e-mail it to me ahead of time so I have it on my laptop's desktop for easy access.
• If you choose to give a poster presentation, bring just a draft version (i.e., not printed on blueprint paper); if the class finds problems, you will need to re-do it before the conference.
• Your conference presentation will be evaluated by at least two psychologists other than me.

Evaluation criteria are shown below.

Evaluation Criteria for Section Drafts (top)

Introduction:
_____ Begins with appeal to larger audience with dependent variable as main topic
_____ Conceptual/theoretical orientation is appropriate for variables of study )
_____ Research literature used to build logical argument for this study and appropriate references are used to support argument
_____ Hypothesis is logically related to a "hole" in the literature
_____ Hypothesis indicates an experimental design using 2 independent variables
_____ Meets format requirements and is well-written (see Common Writing Errors)
____ At least 4 primary/scholarly references used to support ideas
 

Method #1:
_____ (Anticipated) participants are appropriate (in number and other demographic criteria) for study design; motivation is clear
_____ Descriptions of materials (as well as rooms, confederates, etc.) are clear, detailed, and well-organized
_____ Survey descriptions include number of items, content, response scales and published validity/reliability information
_____ Clear descriptions of how the IV(s) will be manipulated and the DV(s) measured 
_____ Procedures follow chronologically from the participants' perspective
_____ Methodology is ethical and is appropriate for testing hypothesis
_____ Writing is clear, well-organized, easy to follow, includes appropriate section headings
 

Additional criteria for Method #2:
_____ Attachments: surveys/study materials as appendices; informed consent & debriefing forms; completed IRB documents)
_____ Procedures indicate strong controls for threats to internal validity
_____ Study materials for participants are professional in appearance and clearly relate to study goals
_____ Instructions to participants and debriefing procedures are clear, appropriate, and reflect care for participants
 

Results & Discussion:
_____ Any data management issues are addressed
_____ Manipulation check analyses are clearly described
_____ Hypotheses are clearly re-stated
_____ Descriptive statistics properly reported
_____ Inferential analyses appropriately test hypothesis
_____ Exploratory analyses conducted appropriately
_____ Results are clearly written, interpretations are clearly supported by analyses
_____ Results are summarized and related back to hypothesis
_____ Both expected and unexpected results are explained
_____ Conclusions and generalizations are appropriately supported by data
_____Study results are clearly connected to rest of literature on topic (theory and research)
_____  Limitations of study and future research directions are appropriate

Evaluation Criteria for Final Paper (top)

Format, style, and incorporation of feedback

APA style: headings, references, margins, one-sided printing, format of title page, abstract, and figure captions, etc.
Mechanics: spelling, grammar, punctuation, verb tense, etc.
Scientific tone: professional, objective, formal
Writing style: clear, well-organized, good transitions, concise
Attachments: SPSS output, all drafts (topic, intro, intro#2/method #1, method #2, res/disc, full draft), peer and professor reviews.  Penalty for each one missing
Feedback: prior conceptual and structural feedback by instructor and peers was appropriately used to improve work

Title: includes major variables & suggests study design
Abstract: appropriately summarizes all sections of paper
Introduction: develops a logical, well-supported argument for this study based on theory and empirical evidence; hypothesis follows and is clearly stated
Method:
     study appropriately tests hypothesis and is well-designed in terms of ethical standards, operationalization of variables, and control for extraneous variables
     appropriate level of detail and organization
     questionnaire is well-designed
Results:
     statistical analyses appropriately used to test hypothesis and explore data
     interpretation of analyses is appropriate, clearly presented, and results are related back to hypotheses
     figures and tables are clear on their own and support text
Discussion:
     conclusions are supported by the data and are put into theoretical and empirical context
     limitations of study and future research directions are appropriate
References :
     sources are scholarly, relevant to research question, and comprehensive
     minimum 10 sources (at least 7 primary/scholarly sources; maximum 2 web sources)

Conference Presentation Evaluation Criteria (top)

Study purpose, context, design/procedure, results and conclusions are clear
Appropriate conclusions and applications
Presentation is appropriate for a general, non-specialist audience
Visual aids (slides, poster) are professional in appearance and content
Presenters have a professional demeanor and public speaking skills
Presenters professionally handled audience questions