311 final assesment
Final Assessment Outline
Competency Name: PSY 311 Research Methods I
Competency Statement: The course is designed to introduce students to the fundamental research techniques used in psychology, social work, criminology, athletic training and education. Students will be taught the basic skills that are necessary for conducting productive and ethical research. The critical skills related to the consumption and understanding of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies will be covered.
Final Assessment Title: Research Proposal
Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
• PLO 1: Information Base in Psychology
• PLO 2: Critical Thinking in Psychology
• PLO 3: Research Methods in Psychology
Competency Learning Outcomes (CLOs)
• CLO 1: Students will develop a scientific research question
• CLO 2: Students will develop a research strategy to answer the research question
• CLO 3: Students will identify appropriate statistical tools to analyze data
• CLO 4: Students will be able to utilize APA writing style and conventions in constructing formal written reports.
You will be writing an APA style research proposal, there can sometimes be some confusion about what to include or not, and at what level of detail. Here is a guide to help you. Details below are not exhaustive for all situations, so please contact your instructor if you have specific questions.
Submission 1: APA style Research Proposal
• Formatting: consult APA style resources for general guidance. You will be writing a student paper so no running head is necessary. MS Word has an APA-style template that you can choose to use when you start it up and choose a document.
• You WILL start with a title page (title, your name, institution, page numbers)
• You do NOT need an abstract
• Research proposals should include the four (4) basic sections
o Intro (not labeled as intro; instead put your title at the top)
o Method minimally having the sub-sections of:
▪ Participants (humans) or Subjects (animals) – this section describes the ‘who’ of your
experiment; demographic details are common as are total numbers, etc.
▪ Materials – a description of specific things you would need(ed) to complete the proposed research, including detailed info about questonnaires, surveys (used before? Reliability? Validity?) tasks, etc.
▪ Procedure – this is a cookbook recipe style set of instructions; refer to papers you’ve read and cited for guidance. Note: all of this is done in paragraph style (not bullet points). You can ‘borrow’ methods from other papers (“…procedures adapted from Smith and Jones (2020)…”)
▪ Sometimes people include Design or Statistical Analyses subsections as well (alternatively, sometimes that information is folded into the procedures section)
o Results – paragraphs detailing the proposed data analysis of your experiments
o Discussion (& Implications) – what would data mean if they supported your hypotheses, if they didn't. What are the limitations of your proposed approach.
• This is one continuous document without page breaks. The main section headings are centered and bolded.
• After the end of the Discussion, you have a page break before beginning your References.
• You may, but are not required to, include: tables and/or figures (often times, individuals find these things helpful in describing anticipated effects). if you do, please include table description or figure legend.
• Figures or Tables can be put in one of two places (either is perfectly acceptable):
o Within the text of the Results section
o At the end of the paper, after the References section
• For a title, a good way to think about it is to include your independent variables (IVs) and dependent variables (DVs) in a structured title. Example:
o The effect of [IV1] on [DV1] in [sample] – here’s an example:
o The effect of caffeine on mood in college students.
• You should include page numbers (usually upper right or lower right corner)
• Introduction – this provides the necessary background to understand the rationale for conducting your study.
This should lay out some basic information about what we know (previous published work) that should help
identify what we don’t know enough about (where your study comesin). In general, this section starts broad and narrows to your study,including specifying any hypotheses you have (in general non-directional are better unless you have very good reason to have directional). Again, please pay attention to papers you’ve read fordifferent approaches to writing your introduction. I anticipate this section is 2-3 pages.
• Your Method section will likely be short (1-2 pages) but include enough information for the reader to reconstruct your experiment
• Your Results section is likely also short (1-2 pages, depending upon your analyses and the inclusion of any tables or graphs/figures). a standard results section, albeit without real collected data, instead speaking generally about what observations would support your hypothesis and what observations would not support your
hypothesis. Make sure to address all relevant hypotheses.
• Your Discussion should start narrow (What did you expect to find?What would finding that mean?) and then broaden out to help frame these results within the bigger picture – would these results beconsistent with previous work? Or different? If so, speculate why (did you propose a different manipulation? Use a different sample? etc). Generally, researchers include a short description of strengths and limitations about their study. Your discussion should be at least 1-2 pages. The references you use in the discussion may be onesyou used previously (in the introduction) OR they may be unique to the discussion only.
• Your References should be in APA style, alphabetical order (by first author’s last name) and include all relevant citation info. Please consult available resources to make sure that you're conforming to APA guidelines. You should have at least 7-10 peer-reviewed, research papers, preferably recent (last 10 yrs). You may choose to include other types of sources (review articles, chapters, books, web pages, etc) although they are not really appropriate for this type of paper (notable exceptions: referring to government sources like NIHor CDC for disease statistics, etc) and will not count toward the five reference minimum. You should have references that pertain to how your independent variable(s) affects your dependent variable(s)
File Logistics:
● Once you've completed your research proposal be sure to save it in a doc, docx, or pdf format and upload to Brightspace.
● Page length will depend on your topic. Probably a good estimateis probably at least 6-8-ish pages of text: intro (2-4), method (2-4), results (1-2), discussion (1-2). But less than 6 pages for this assignment is probably too short, more than 12 is probably more than you need. This does NOT include title page, references, any optional tables, figures, or appendices.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Before submitting, double-check, have you have met the criteria noted below. Did you….
• Complete each of the sections described in the instructions for the assignment?
• Use APA format correctly to format your paper, in your in-text citations, reference page, and any tables, figures, or appendices?
● Your completed final assessment documents should be submitted through the Final Assessment link of your competency.
● Please note, that you can upload multiple files to the Final Assignment link.
● Make sure the files are converted to a doc, docx, ppt, pptx file. (you can share Google Doc and MS OneDrive documents from the “Choose Existing Activities” button)
● To upload a file, click “Upload File” and choose the file(s) from your desktop:
More tutorial resources can be found at the UMPI Student eLearning Hub
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Final Assessment Rubric
Criterion | Exemplary- 4 | Proficient- 3 | Developing- 2 | Emerging- 1 |
Research Question | Strong, clear rationale for research question with a logical hypothesis; Scientifically interesting question without ethical concerns. | Adequate rationale for research question with a logical hypothesis; Question is somewhat interesting without ethical concerns. | Rationale for research question and/or hypothesis is lacking; Question is less scientifically interesting and/or there are minor ethical concerns that haven't been addressed. | No clear rationale for research question or hypothesis; Proposed research has little to no scientific interest or has major ethical concerns. |
Methods | Methods are ideal for answering the research question and are practical; Written with complete detail to allow for replication | Methods are adequate for answering the research question but may not be the most practical approach; Written with sufficient detail to allow for replication. | Methods are lacking to answer the research question or are impractical; Lacking detail necessary to allow for complete replication. | Methods do not appear to address the research question; Too little information to allow for replication. |
Proposed Analyses | Proposed statistical analyses are ideal for the research question; Thoughtful consideration of what supporting or failing to support hypotheses is included. | Proposed statistical analyses are adequate for the research question; Some thoughtfulness in consideration of what supporting or failing to support hypotheses is included. | Proposed statistical analyses are not best suited and/or incomplete for research question. Lack of consideration of what supporting or failing to support hypotheses is included. | Proposed statisticalanalyses are inappropriate for research question. No consideration of what supporting or failing to support hypotheses is included. |
APA Style | The paper is formatted correctly; There are few if any APA errors | The paper is generally formatted correctly; There are a few minor APA errors. | Paper formatting is somewhat problematic; There are a number of APA errors throughout. | Paper contains a significant number of APA errors in terms of formatting and citation style; These errors may lead to issues with plagiarism |
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