Instructions
Although you worked as a group on the experimental design and data collection, each student will submit an individual five-page paper. If you write less than 4.5 pages, you are not making use of the space available to you and will be deducted points. If you write more than 5.5 pages, you are writing too much and you will be deducted points. Your paper is therefore expected to be between 4.5 and 5.5 pages in length. This page count does not include the title page, reference page, or any appendix. You may work together on the statistical analyses if you wish. However, the writing of the paper should be completed individually.
Note: the expectation is you write a paper in a research methods style.
- This means in the same style as the typical paper you have been reading in the readings for each week so far in the course.
- This means using citations to support claims, statements, facts, or opinions you present. When you write the paper, do not write anywhere about the ‘assignment’ or ‘course/class’, Although you are writing this paper because of the course, you should not mention this in the paper.
- Also, do not use the prompts listed below as questions/sub-headings in your paper. For example, don’t write ‘Justify why you selected this issue’ in the paper and then answer this question. You answer this question in the course of writing your page 1, just as the articles in the readings you read answer this question without specifically writing ‘justify why you selected this issue.’
- You should stay close to the page specifications below but it is okay if a section is a few (23) lines shorter or longer than stated. In some cases, your method may be much shorter than the specified length in which case add additional text elsewhere in the paper to compensate.
- Do not make up statistics or information.
- The paper should be written in APA style. (Remember, this means double-spaced!) In this paper and other papers in the course, you should avoid personal stories about your personal experiences.
- An abstract is not needed for this paper or any papers in the course.
- You should not cite course materials (this includes live sessions).
Page 12: Intro
- Present a general surface-level description of the issue the paper’s content will examine (references).
- Explain why understanding this case is important (references).
- Justify why you selected this issue (references).
- What specific question(s)/hypothesis(es) are you trying to answer?
Page 3: Method
- Use this , also found in the instructional materials for this week, to format this section.
- Include a link to the Qualtrics experiment (the link you used in Turk) at the bottom of the method page as a footnote in Times New Roman 12-point font.
Page 4: Results
- Analyze the results from the experiment using statistical analyses you deem appropriate.
- Present the results of the statistical analyses in APA style.
- The analysis of the data from the experiment can be completed as a group, pairs, threes, or individually. The same for the write-up of these results in APA style. (Remember in the SPSS assignment, you wrote up the results in APA style). Whether you work alone or with others for the results section has no direct impact on your grade. Your grade for the results section of your paper is determined by what is in your results section, whether you did this alone or with others. Please note: that means that if you have a mistake in your results section that was the result of you accepting/trusting the work of someone else, that is your responsibility and your paper grade is lowered. You cannot claim points back by arguing that someone else conducted that analysis or miswrote up the report. If the work is in your results section it is your responsibility.
- You do not need to analyze all the questions in the experiment. Analyze only what is sufficient to meet the page space of the results section as outlined in the paper instructions.
- It is important to make sure the question/topic you pose in the introduction (pages 12) is answered at least in part by the results presented in the results section.
- Upload the SPSS data file you used for your paper into Week 14 Checkpoint 01. For most teams everyone will have very similar or identical SPSS data files but it is ok if your data file is different.
- You do not need to have significant results. Significant results are often more interesting for you personally to write about but your grade is not determined by whether your results are significant or non-significant.
- There should be no SPSS output anywhere in the paper (this includes any Appendix). Everything your instructor needs from the data is in your APA style write-up or the master SPSS file that is uploaded.
Page 5: Discussion
- Explain what your data means.
- Offer some tentative explanations as to why you think you found the data you did.
- Include possible limitations of your experiment.
- Provide some suggested practical implications from your results.
Note: Remember 1-inch margins and only Times New Roman 12-point font. If you need Tables, these should go in an Appendix, which is placed after the references. Official APA rules allow Tables to be embedded directly in the paper, such as in the results, but in this course all tables will go in the Appendix.
Week 13 Activity 01: Design and Conduct an Experiment (Group)
Due: Sunday, April 5th
Instructions:
For this module, you will work within your groups to design an experiment on any topic of your choice.
For this checkpoint, please have one group member post the following:
- Our research hypothesis is that when two products are identical in all aspects, (like price and design), adding a “discount label will make people more likely to buy the product.
- The independent variable (IV) is the discount label.
- We will manipulate this by showing one group a product with a 20% OFF label and another group the same product without the label. Everything else will stay the same.
- A dependent variables (DVs) are:
- How likely they are to buy the product (17 scale)
- Whether they would choose this product over similar ones (17 scale)
Here are three concrete examples of an experiment. Note the first experiment would not be a good one for your course paper as it is too hard and time consuming for you to implement in real time. It is presented however as a reminder for you of what happened in the live session.
Example 1
- Candy improves memory. (Hypothesis as it makes a prediction.)
- IV = Candy, one group will receive candy, one group will not receive candy.
- DV = Number of words correctly recalled. (Note for your study, it is strongly recommended you have multiple DVs, the live session only had one DV to simplify the example.) Measured by number of words correctly recalled.
Example 2
- What type of movie poster is most effective? (Question as no prediction.)
- IV = Type of movie poster, one group will see hero, one group will see villain, one group will see hero and villain. Everything else about the posters is identical apart from whether it is the hero, villain, or both hero and villain.
- DV = desire to see movie, likelihood of recommending movie to friend, likelihood of watching movie trailer on internet, likelihood of looking for movie on social media (e.g. facebook). All DVs measured on 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). Example question 1) “This movie poster makes me want to see this movie”. Example question 2) “This movie poster makes me want to watch the movie trailer”.
Example 3
- In food packing, gluten-free statements are more effective than high protein at increasing consumer desire to purchase the product. (Hypothesis as it makes a prediction.)
- IV = Type of nutritional claim; one group will see the product with a gluten-free statement and one group will see the product with a high protein statement. Everything else about the product is identical apart from the nutritional claim. To create this you would find an image of the product on the Internet and then Photoshop in the two different nutritional claims.
- DV = desire to buy the product, likelihood of buying the product, frequency of buying the product. All DVs measured on 7 point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). Example question 1) “I want to buy this product”. Example question 2) “I would buy this product for my lunch”.
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