PSCH320 Writing in Psychology

For paper 3, you will design a short survey study, collect, and analyze data. You will work in a team of 2-3 students. Thus, this unit requires a combination of group work and individual work. To help you with Paper 3, follow these guided questions to help you organize your thoughts and writing. Further, as was the case with the previous worksheets, you will receive feedback that you are expected to incorporate into your final experiment and final paper. As such, the more you write for this worksheet, the more feedback you will get, which will aid you in your final paper assignment for this unit. This worksheet is an individual assignment, and as such, every student needs to complete this worksheet independently. 

For Paper 3, you are asked to identify a question related to a psychological question. Bear in mind that you are not implementing an intervention. Rather, you are collecting data from other undergraduates. For instance, past students have successfully completed this assignment by measuring attitudes about their social problem, along with another variable (i.e., the relationship between attitudes about homelessness and willingness to help people who are homeless). To protect your respondents, I ask that you limit your questions to topics that do not require respondents to disclose deeply personal or painful experiences (e.g., exposure to trauma, sexual behaviors, etc.). Whereas the previous papers in this class focused on core community psychology principles, Paper 3 will be broader in scope. You will use self-report measures to examine the relationship between at least two variables. 

Once you develop your research question, you can design your study. 

Please answer the following questions (each response is worth up to 2 points):

1. Provide four or more references (in APA style) that you will use in your literature review. These references should be about the topic you selected for Paper 3. 

2. Provide an outline of “what is known” about your variables. Think of this as an outline of your literature review section of your paper. 

3. Explain the variables you wish to study. 

4. Why do you think the variables in your study are related to one another? Rely on the existing literature for your evidence and rationale. 

5. How could you measure these variables? For this response, please list the names of measures and the original references for these measures. I recommend making sure you can get the full measures before committing to a particular measure.

6. How will you score the measures? In other words, how do you use the data from the measure once respondents complete it? 

7. Are your variables continuous or categorical? Explain. 

8. Provide at least one hypothesis for your study. 

9. What statistical analysis will you need to test your hypothesis? 

10. What information should participants know before completing your study? Are any of your questions likely to embarrass or distress participants? Explain.