1 Please complete the assignment according to the marking guide and please read all the files i’ve uploaded as they are essential to writing the lab report correctly
PSY2SOC 2014 Laboratory Report Instructions General Information
The aim of this assignment is to provide students with the opportunity to develop a “hands-on” understanding of social psychology and its methods through participation in (and analysis and write-up of) an actual experiment. Students will advance their skills in the following areas, learning how:
a) to describe and interpret a social psychological phenomenon using abstract concepts and theoretical arguments; b) to access journal articles and web-links to identify and evaluate information relevant to the research topic; c) to describe, apply, and evaluate a typical research method in social psychology; and d) to communicate through scientific writing at a level more advanced than achieved in previous subjects.
This year’s topic is about perspective-taking and empathy and their influence on increasing willingness to help and reducing negative beliefs and behaviours toward a stigmatized target (a person with serious mental illness). The following articles provide an important introduction to this research area is briefly reviewed in the following starting reference which is available in the “assignments” folder on the PSY2SOC LMS:
Batson, C. D., Chang, J., Orr, R., & Rowland, J. (2002). Empathy, attitudes and action: Can feeling for a member of a stigmatized group motivate one to help the group? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1656-1666.
Batson, C. D., Polycarpou, M. P., Harmon-Jones, E., Imhoff, H. J., Mitchener, E. C., Bedner, L. L., Klein, T. R. & Highberger, L. (1997). Empathy and attitudes: Can feeling for a member of a stigmatized group improve feelings toward the group? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 105-118.
Link, B. G., Cullen, F. T., Frank, J., & Wozniak, J. F. (1987). The social rejection of former mental patients: Understanding why labels matter. American Journal of Sociology, 92, 1461–1500.
Students will also need to find, read, and summarise other articles on perspective-taking, empathy, and/or stigma of mental illness in order to provide adequate support for the hypotheses tested in our experiment. Recommendations about this will be outlined briefly below (when the requirements for the introduction section to the lab report are laid out). We have been using tutorial sessions to focus on the experiment, beginning in the first tutorial with the actual collection of data. Within each Tutorial 1 session during Week 1 of the semester, students took the role of “participants” in the study and were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (instructed to engage in “imagine-other” perspective-taking) or a control group (instructed to remain objective). The actual procedures for the study and all materials used in the study are available on the LMS. To refresh yourself about our procedures (or if you missed the first tutorial), please read through the ethics application that was submitted to gain approval for this experiment. This is also in the “assignments” (lab report materials) folder and is labelled “PSY2SOC 2014 (STUKAS) Teaching_Practical-Classes-and-Laboratory-Exercises-Application-3.3.14.pdf”.
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Section 1.3 lists the steps in the procedure that we used. Also in this folder, you will find the perspective-taking and remain objective instructions that comprised the independent variable, along with the participant information statement and consent form and the full questionnaire that included our dependent variables, which participants completed after they watched the stimulus video. The video interview with the target woman with schizoaffective disorder can be played in the LMS and the link is located in the Tutorial 1 folder. During Tutorial 2 (Week 3), we reviewed the basic theory linking perspective-taking and empathy to both helping behaviour and more positive attitudes toward stigmatized groups. This included a worksheet that small groups were encouraged to complete (and to continue to complete on their own time, if there was not enough time in the tutorial session). The worksheet guides students to think about the independent and dependent variables in the experiment, the hypotheses that link them, and the kinds of information that need to be included in the introduction section of the final report (with citations) in order to justify these hypotheses. During Tutorial 3 (Week 5), we reviewed these hypotheses again and used t-tests to test our hypotheses focused on three specific dependent variables (willingness to help, social distancing, perceived dangerousness) and one potential mediator (empathy). We talked about potential moderators of our effects and looked at correlations between the outcome variables. The actual SPSS file containing the data that we collected as well as an annotated version of the survey used to collect our dependent variables (“Dependent Measures Survey”) were made available on the LMS in the assignments folder. During Week 6, all students will take an online quiz about the experiment that will contain 20 multiple choice, true/false, or fill-in-the-blank items. The quiz is worth 10% of your final mark in PSY2SOC. The quiz will be open book and designed to help you demonstrate your understanding of the information needed to successfully write up the final empirical laboratory report in APA style. There will be a time-limit on the quiz session and students must complete the quiz in one sitting before 8 PM Sunday (7 September), Week 7. During Tutorial 4 (Week 7), we will review the answers to the quiz, clarify any remaining questions about the experiment, and discuss these instructions for the lab report in detail. The lab report itself must be no more than 2000 words (there is no 10% rule allowing 2200 words to be acceptable — you can write less than 2000 words if you wish and can get the appropriate content included). The lab report is worth 40% of your final mark in PSY2SOC and is due by 5 PM on Monday October 6th. We will only be accepting online submissions through TurnItIn; hard copies are not necessary (see the Subject Learning Guide for more information about how to submit). The lab report must be in APA style (6th edition) with abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references, and tables or figures (as needed). The 2014 Undergraduate Student Handbook created by the School of Psychological Science offers a brief review of how to write a laboratory report (see pp. 34 to 45) — this is located in the Handbooks folder on our LMS site. You may also wish to consult the APA Publication Manual (2010) itself which should be on reserve at your local campus library. Below, we detail more specifically what is expected for the assignment, section by section, ending with the marking criteria that will be used by markers to come up with a final summary mark for your assignment.
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Abstract
In no more than 150 words, you must summarise the study, including at least a sentence each focused on the background literature and hypotheses/predictions, the method, the results, and the conclusions we drew. The abstract is NOT included in the overall word count (2000 words).
Abstract (10%)
• General introductory statement included. • Main aim and hypotheses clear. • Important aspects of method presented. • Key results highlighted. • Statement of conclusion provided.
Introduction In this section you need to provide a clear summary of the background literature and theoretical principles that led us to propose certain hypotheses and to design our study the way that we did. In other words, you need to provide an adequate introduction to perspective- taking and empathy and describe research that has shown how they influence helping behaviour and attitudes toward stigmatised groups. You will need to make the case that the past literature supports our hypotheses about how our independent variable would influence reactions to people with serious mental illness. To do so, you need to find and read a number of relevant empirical journal articles and present their conclusions along with any relevant aspects of their methodology (for example, operationalizations) that you think are important to build support for the hypotheses. You should generally avoid writing your introduction as a “laundry list” of one study after another, paragraph by paragraph, with complete descriptions of each study’s methods and results. Instead, devote paragraphs to particular ideas and summarise across the different studies that talk about that particular idea in the relevant paragraph. If there is a particular study that is very important or relevant to our study’s aims or methods, then it might be worth talking about those methods in detail but otherwise this is typically not done (unless there is a particular methodological element that needs to be discussed and criticised or heralded). It may be helpful for you to draw up an outline of what needs to be included in the literature review, so that you include all of the necessary principles that are found in your hypotheses. In our case, this would mean the principles behind the effects of perspective-taking vs. objective instructions, the typical methods and outcomes used in such studies, the specific target individuals and outgroups that have been studied, and the specific set of hypotheses related to our study. Because we have multiple dependent variables to look at, you could consider grouping distancing and dangerousness under a single over-arching hypothesis to help you to fit your introduction into a reasonable word count (no more than 700 words, on average). Other “savings” measures may also be possible (for example, you may not wish to include both aims and hypotheses if these are redundant with each other). We expect all reports to have at least five references. If you only include the four Batson references along with Link et al. (1987) this will not earn you a high mark — you need to demonstrate that you have reviewed the literature and included material that was not handed to you by teaching staff in order to earn high marks. You should seek to identify articles that
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are directly relevant to the study we conducted. You should have papers that were published after the starting references (after 2002) but you may also have papers that were published earlier. The ethics application provides references for the studies from which the materials we used were adapted. You may be able to use the reference sections of recent empathy or perspective-taking articles to help you track down additional relevant papers. Introduction (20%)
• Starts general and becomes more specific. • All key concepts are clearly defined. • The major relevant points in the following areas are introduced: o Stigma of Mental Illness o Empathy-Altruism Model • Relevant previous studies were selected and evaluated. o Particularly studies supporting the operationalisations of the independent and dependent variables are reviewed. • Information has been organised in a logical and well-justified argument. • The review of the literature leads clearly to appropriately stated hypotheses.
Method APA style manuscripts generally break down the Method section into Participants, Materials, and Procedure subsections. You should do the same. You need to be efficient in your word use in this section — aim for no more than 400 words.
Participants Your participants section should tell readers how many participants were included in the study (including how many from each gender). Your tutor has provided you with the mean, standard deviation, and range for age of participants in the sample. You also need to indicate how participants were recruited to the study and whether there were any incentives for participation. Materials
In this section, you need to describe the materials used to manipulate the independent variable including a citation to indicate where they came from, as well as all other materials used (the stimulus video and each of the outcome variables). In reporting each of the dependent variables, you need to include the number of items, response scale (e.g., 1 to 7, with an indication of the poles), and Cronbach’s alpha (provided on the Tutorial 3 slides). You will be unlikely to have room for sample items from each scale which is often preferred so be sure to include a brief definition of what the variable is about. You need to indicate the previous studies from which the measures were taken (and if they were adapted).
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Procedure Provide a step by step review of the methods used in the study from the participants’ point of view. Do not use a numbered list but instead write this out in words.
Method (20%)
• Participants o Sample size included. o Gender and age included. o Methods used to recruit participants included. • Materials o For administration of the independent variable; o Stimulus video; o To measure the dependent variables; • Important validity and reliability information has been provided. o Measures are clearly described with sufficient detail. • Procedure o The procedure is logically sequenced, including all steps from start to finish. o A clear explanation of testing conditions is provided. o The manner in which each material was administered including any instructions is provided.
Results The trick to writing a concise results section is to include some of the details in tables. Words included in tables (or figures) are NOT counted in the overall word count. Our hypotheses were tested with two-group comparisons (independent samples t-tests). You need to provide the results of the four t-tests (including the one focused on empathy) with the appropriate amount of statistical detail. Look at how other empirical papers do this, or look at the APA publication manual or recall how you were instructed to do it during first year psychology. There is a very strict formatting rule. You also need to supply means and standard deviations to clarify these t-tests (M and SD for the perspective-taking and objective control conditions for all dependent variables). The means and standard deviations could be in a table (formatted correctly in APA style) and you might consider also putting information from the t- tests into the same table. (I will upload a scan of a relevant table from the APA manual to the assignments folder). Effect sizes (Cohen’s d) should also be included for each t-test and you need to calculate these yourself using the effect size calculator from the Tutorial 3 slides: http://www.uccs.edu/~lbecker/. Naturally, you need to refer to any tables you include in your report in the text and provide a summary of the comparisons. We also looked at correlations between our dependent measures. How will you report these? Text or table? Highlight the significant relationships and include their p values. Again, you need to include a brief statement offering a conclusion about the results found, but you do not need to link this back to past research or theory — save that for the discussion section. Finally, you have the option of reporting gender differences on each of our outcomes (again,
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potentially in a table). However, if you choose to do this, you will need to find articles in the literature that you can relate our findings to (i.e., that also report and discuss gender differences on those variables). It will not be necessary to have explicit hypotheses related to gender (although this is an option open to you). It is appropriate throughout the results section to be clear about the direction of the effects that you are looking for (i.e., your hypotheses), so the reader can keep your “plan” straight and conclude appropriately whether you found support for your ideas. If you use tables to contain your information, then the results section can be fairly brief, 200 to 300 words. Please use scientific notation for all numeric values (two places after the decimal), except for p values that are less than .01.
Results (20%) • Presentation of appropriate t-tests in the text with appropriate statistical detail and formatted correctly. o Statistical outcomes are stated in a meaningful and concrete way for the reader. o Effect sizes are included. • Table of descriptive statistics for each variable included broken down by condition and referred to in text. o Layout of table is clear and provides all necessary and accurate information. • Relevant correlations between dependent measures are presented in the text or a table accurately and with appropriate statistical detail. • Clear statement of conclusion regarding the outcomes of the analyses is provided. • The results are interpreted accurately in light of the data presented.
Discussion In the discussion section, you need to continue telling the story that you started telling in the introduction. Remember to keep the reader in mind throughout your entire laboratory report — what do they need to know and have you told them this information in an orderly fashion? So, at the start of the discussion, you need to remind the reader about your hypotheses and indicate whether your analyses offered support for them or not. We also looked at correlations between our dependent measures (without regard for whether participants were in the perspective-taking or control groups) to determine whether there were clear and understandable relationships. Report what we found and draw conclusions. No statistical information (i.e., numeric values) should be provided in the discussion section. You may also wish to present gender differences here, treating them as exploratory if you did not include an explicit hypothesis in the introduction. After summarising the results and indicating whether or not they supported the hypotheses, you need to go back to the past research literature and compare our study (and results) to what was done (and found) before. Although our correlations were largely exploratory and descriptive findings, they may “make sense”. If so, you would want to find articles in the research literature that you can cite in the discussion section that are consistent with the pattern of correlations. Given that the main hypotheses of the study were not supported, you need to think about why. Did we conduct our project differently from other studies and could that have
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made a difference? Was our sample different? This should give you an opportunity to talk about the methodology we used and the kinds of methodologies that are often used to test predictions focused on perspective-taking and empathy. What can you conclude? Such a discussion may naturally turn to a focus on limitations. What were the limitations of our study? Are there other factors related to internal or external validity that may have played a role in our lack of significant findings? Could or should we have done our study differently? This might include a focus on variables that could have been included in the study but were not — of course, any such suggestions need to be tied back to the past research literature for support. Your discussion section should be clear and concise with citations to relevant studies (some will be the same as those cited in the introduction but some could be different) to back up all of your points and to help to interpret our study’s findings or the suggestions you have for why it went wrong or what should be done in the future. You will need to use some words to do all this and may only have 600 left, so you must be efficient. Remember that in text citations as well as anything in parentheses or direct quotes (do not use direct quotes unless absolutely necessary) all count as part of the word count. Discussion (20%)
• A statement of support (or lack of support) for hypotheses is integrated with a summary of main results. • How the results link to the past research literature has been effectively presented. • The information evaluated is relevant in addressing the outcomes of the study. • The statement of conclusion effectively ties up the findings of the current study. • The value of the methodology and theory has been discussed. • Limitations of the research that limit the conclusions that can be drawn from the results have been addressed. • Potential solutions for methodological issues have been presented. • Discussion of future research directions was effective.
Writing Style The best advice I can give is “omit needless words.” You should have someone who is not in PSY2SOC proofread your work (for understandability as well as for spelling and grammatical errors). You need to define all terms and provide citations for any points that you want to make. You should go through multiple drafts to make sure that the final report is the best it can be. You need to avoid duplication and redundancy. Please adhere to proper rules of grammar; use apostrophes correctly and avoid run-on sentences. Writing Style (5%)
• All components of the task are present. • The English language skills used are excellent and do not hinder understanding. • Correct discipline-specific terminology has been used to describe the content and, where appropriate, care has been taken to explain terminology. • No repetitive information is present.
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• The work is very well written. The writing is fluent, engaging and interesting to read. The word choice, sentence variety and expression in general are excellent.
APA Format You will have learned to write using APA style in your first year psychology subjects. Although the percentage of your mark affected by using this style appropriately is low, there is a cumulative negative impact of not adhering to the proper style that may influence your markers (this also applies to the presence of spelling and grammatical mistakes and/or an untidy presentation). There are numerous resources for APA style that I am confident you will find (look first in the Undergraduate Student Handbook). The key elements that we are looking for (title page, header, page numbering, headings, in-text citations, reference list) are mentioned below. Please note: this handout is not in APA style. APA Format (5%)
• Correctly formatted title page with descriptive title included. • Page numbers and header correctly formatted. • Double spacing used throughout. • Non-biased language used. • Appropriately formatted using correct levels of headings. • References and in-text citations in correct APA format.
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