Research Proposal

Summary

Each student will complete a small research project and paper by performing the early stages of test development, using a small survey test (2 items) that attempts to measure two factors of one specific construct. Every student’s questions will be combined in one large survey on a website. The entire class will take this survey. The resulting data will be provided for every student to use. You will then individually analyze your test items and write up the results. You will submit the paper in two parts: The Proposal and the Paper. The length and detailed feedback serve to meet CSUSM’s writing requirement for this course.

 

Format & Length:

Proposal (50 points): APA format, 1000 words (about 4 pages double spaced)

Paper (100 points): APA format, 2000 words (about 8 pages, not including figures or references).

 

Proposal:

• Pick a field and subfield of psychology (e.g. “Clinical Psychology”, “Anxiety Disorders”)

• Find one Review article that matches this topic (see lecture notes and refer to Exercise 3 for tips on finding Review articles). You may use either article from Exercise 3 if it’s appropriate but you are not required to.

• Pick a Construct within this topic – note, you may not choose any of these topics: Anxiety, or any of the 5 NEO-FFI-3 factors: Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, or Conscientiousness.

• Find one Original Research article that uses a specific test or measure of the construct.

• Identify two factors (aka dimensions or facets) of your construct to measure.

• Design one question to measure each factor (a total of two questions).

The test item(s) should be Ordinal or Numerical (Interval /Ratio). Don’t use Nominal (Categorical). Most students choose a Rating or Likert format. If you use a Likert format, be sure to include the specific words & numbers for your question (e.g. 1=Strongly Agree, 2=Agree… etc.). For best results, your scale should have at least 5 answer choices (four-point Likert scales don’t work well for this experiment)

• Decide how to measure the Reliability of your measurements

• Decide how to combine the measures into a single test to increase Reliability.

• Decide how to measure the Validity of your measurements (Convergent and Divergent)

• Write your Proposal (please follow the outline and sample assignment below)

• Turn in Proposal for Grade & Feedback – see website for due date and upload information.

 

 

 

Outline of Proposal:

Please use APA format and follow this outline format carefully. Be sure to review the sample paper included at the end of this assignment.

Abstract

Write an APA-format abstract that summarizes your proposal. Length: minimum 200 words. [Hints: Write this last: the abstract is not an introduction, but rather summarizes each section of your paper with about 1-2 sentences per section. Make sure the abstract doesn’t include any information that doesn’t appear in the paper. Watch the verb tense: for the Proposal, you “will” do things in the future, for the Paper you “have” done things. For the Proposal, include predicted results. For the Paper, include actual results.

 

Background

Construct and Factors

Provide reference to a single review article and use it to describe and define the specific construct that you wish to measure. Summarize the two or more factors of this construct using this review article. Note: it’s helpful to come up with short names for both factors. Use these terms consistently throughout the paper. (don’t say “Q1” and “Q2” but instead use the names of the factors, e.g. “My two factors, hopefulness, and mood level”). (Length: 1 long paragraph)

 

Research and Measurements

Provide a reference to a single original research article and summarize how the author(s) measured this construct, and briefly summarize their experimental results. Focus on methods/measures: what kind of test questions? How many? What format? What did they say about reliability or validity of their measure(s)? (Length: 1 long paragraph)

 

Rationale

This transition paragraph should describe why you are proposing this particular study. Compare your study to the research article in terms of subjects, methods, and especially the measurements used. Explain why you chose the two variables for convergent and divergent validity (and since you are probably using the NEO-FFI-3, cite it properly). Make specific predictions of what you hope to find. (1 long paragraph)

 

Methods

Subjects

Describe the subjects that will be taking the survey and why they were selected [For the proposal: you don’t yet know specific demographics (age, % female) but you should still describe the population in general terms. For the Paper, include full demographics, including M (SD) of age, %female, and comment on diversity].

 

Materials and Measures

Provide two test questions, each of which measures one factor of your construct. The questions must be grammatically correct, easy to understand, and in a format usable for an online survey and appropriate for the subjects: normal, healthy undergraduate college students. The questions should both use either Ordinal or Continuous (numeric) measurement scales. Nominal or Categorical answers are not allowed. Most students choose Likert (4-7 answer choices) or a Category Rating scale (7-10 choices).

Describe the other variables that you are using for convergent and divergent validity.

Analyses

Analysis 1: Descriptive Statistics. Describe the statistics you will calculate and the two figures you will create. What do you predict?

Analysis 2: Reliability. Indicate which kind of reliability you intend to measure, and specify which two variables that you will use, the specific statistical test, what kind of figure you will create, and the predicted results.

Analysis 3: Combine Scores. One of the easiest ways to increase reliability is by making a test longer. Since you have 2 test questions, it makes sense to consider these as part of an overall Test and combine these into a single measure (by averaging the scores together). Explain how you will do this and name this new factor. Be aware of the possible need to reverse-score one of your items. Describe the figures and predicted results.

Analysis 4: Validity. Describe how you will establish convergent validity (by showing that some variables are correlated). Describe how you will establish divergent validity (by showing that some variables are not correlated). Please make sure that these two variables are defined and justified in the Background section. Describe the figures and predicted results. Note: since you are not collecting the convergent or divergent variables yourself, you’ll need use group data that we are collecting on the survey (such as NEOAC factors) or collaborate with another student to use their data.

 

References

[ include an APA-format bibliography citing your articles]