Psychology 2011 1997 Lab Week 3 Summary

These pages are demonstration pages of mixed mode deli very for an on-campus course. The curriculum and course structure has changed substantially for 1998, but these pages have been retained here as an example of a particular use of the Web in teaching.

A review of the background theoretical material for the language acquisition experiment presented on the overheads can be found at the following site WUG Introduction Overheads.

ATTITUDES TOWARDS COMPUTERS - METHOD DRAFTS

Why do you correct the drafts?

The process of correcting your own drafts is to encourage you as students, trainee psychologists, and writers to critically evaluate your own work. Usually, the best and most appropriate form of feedback on performance tasks comes from yourself from honest self-appraisal. The best ways to learn things, is to have you recognise the good parts and identify those areas that need attention. These points become more salient when you do the corrections and not us in the role of external markers.

In correcting your drafts we encouraged you to highlight and congratulate yourself on the good original parts of your drafts. The natural tendency for students is to pull apart those aspects of their drafts that need attention. Give yourself credit when it is due, build on those strengths and gain satisfaction and confidence from those things you already do well.

Method

Participants

The first point most students corrected was regarding appropriate formatting according to O’Shea (1996). Whilst we generally do not deduct marks for not following formatting guidelines regarding different levels of headings (eg. "Method" should be Bold and Centred), it is good practice and training to start to prepare your work according to APA guidelines. Of particular concern to us this year, is that long reports be double-spaced (preferably typed but not critical) with appropriate margins, enabling markers room to make comments on your work.

Things to note in the "Participants" section;

Give sex, age, and occupation of subjects (if relevant) Age range? Is this important for your study?
Explain selection process briefly and whether, paid, volunteer, etc...Is selection process truly random?
Where subjects are sampled from? (need only include if important, be brief)
Include other subject characteristics eg. race, religion, political affiliation ONLY if relevant to study.
Are subjects naive? Does this matter? This will epend entirely on the purpose of the experiment combined with the instructions to subjects.
Need to describe adequately the subject groups (conditions) if you are doing some comparative analyses.

The process of counterbalancing for subject characteristics was discussed and it was emphasised that you counterbalance variables, subject characteristics the presentation of materials that you are not interested in testing the effects of directly. For example, if you were interested in examining computer anxiety in university students from different faculties but not gender differences, you should attempt to have equal numbers of male and female subjects in each condition. This prevents your results from possibly being explained in terms of gender differences rather than the anticipated differences across faculties.

Materials

A materials section describes the specific instruments used to collect data in the study. For the attitude towards computers study the following points should be noted in your "Materials" section;

A brief description of the questionnaire to be used is required.
- Name any subscales in the inventory, and the number of items in each.
- Describe measurement scale but NOT coding and scoring information. (eg.5 point Likert scale, responses SA - SD).
- If questionaire is derived or adapted from another source then you acknowledge original version.
- Include pointer to full inventory in Appendix.
- Generally good idea to provide one or two example items from each subscale.
Give brand names and numbers for unusual sorts of equipment.
This section concerns the material used for collecting data only. Only include items necessary for replication of the experiment (eg. clipboards, blue pens, score sheets, etc... are not necessary.)

Procedure

It is imperative in this section to detail explicitly the procedures employed. Brief, accurate and concise information is required. The key points discussed with respect to this section were;

Include only that information necessary for replication of the experiment.
Details of the procedure must accurately reflect what you did, and asked your subjects to do.
Any differences in the procedure for different groups must be mentioned.
Omit any details incidental to the data collection process UNLESS they may help explain the data.

Counterbalancing procedures in some experiments is also important, whether it be the presentation of materials, or the order with which you run subjects on tasks. You do not want your data being explained in terms of procedural details, when you are not testing for these differences directly. Counterbalancing procedural matters assists in this matter

Data Analysis

Many students were not aware this section was required as part of the draft Method section. We asked you to include a data analysis section really for your own benefit, to get you to start thinking about the form of the data you will present and the analyses required to test your research hypotheses. We will encourage you to describe the important details about how the data is coded, scored, and transformed into the form, it will subsequently be reported, in the Results section. Such information reflects that you have considered prior to collecting your data, what statistics you will use with your data to answer your research hypotheses.

For the purpose of this draft it was important to note the following;

The form of the raw data and the scoring procedure should be explained briefly but accurately. How any total scores or classification were calculated need to be described.
The choice of descriptive statistics eg. measure of central tendency ie/ mean, median or mode,some measure of varince ie/ SD, SE or variance.
Adequate description of any comparative analyses if you have more than one condition or subject group. (At this stage your choice of statistical tests is recognised as limited).

If there was a recurring theme throughout the material presented in correcting the drafts it was the emphasised placed on the notion of only including those pieces of information IMPORTANT to your experiment. What are the crucial parts that are required in order for replication? The method section can be viewed as a recipe to be followed, including the ingredients. Concise expression of accurate information is what we are looking for. Any details of the method that may subsequently explain how the results turn out that are not formally implmented as IVs should also be flagged (that is described) in the Methods section.

Checklist

The following tasks should be completed or near completion by week 4;

Attendance at a PSY2011 or other library tutorial.
Research hypotheses for the CAS short report should now be formalised.
Draft Method section written, corrected and handed in to your tutor.
Read the Language Acquisition (WUG) material on the Web.
Start organising testing time for WUG experiment.
Read the WUG references.
Note you must read the references and practice your stories before you test the child
Draft Introduction section for WUG experiment will be corrected in lab class in Week 5, after Easter break. Get Started on this after preliminary reading.

If you require any materials for the WUG experiment please come and see me before the Easter break. The Wug Data Entry Program will not be operational before 24th March 1997. If you have any problems in submitting your data electronically please contact Lisa Wise. There will be a box outside the Psychology General Office on the 4th Floor for the submission of the raw data sheets (includes subject information), data summary sheet and signed consent form. (We should not see any Explantory Statements).

Good luck and have fun in collecting the WUG data over the next few weeks. (Remeber this is good lab diary stuff) Chris Hughes

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