Assignment
This assignment is designed to test your ability to create knowledge. Choose any psychology topic. Write a research proposal for an experiment on this topic, the experiment can’t be hypothetical, please make it easily testable and easily to make as rhe experiment will actually be carried out. “thinking small” meaning working on something a student can experiment.(not an experiment to be groundbreaking or anything)
This experiment should be one that you have designed yourself. You can of course get inspiration from published experiments on the topic, but your proposal should not replicate exactly those that already exist. You will receive feedback on this experiment proposal once you have submitted it, and will be expected to actually carry out this experiment to present (make it easily to carry out for a university student and no/low budget)
Word Count +/- 10% 1500
How To Write Your Experiment Proposal
0.small executive summary
1. Introduction
The introduction discusses the background and significance of the problem you are investigating. Lead the reader from the general to the specific. For example, if you are investigating whether priming before a test affects the performance of Hult students on that test, first talk about the concept of social priming. Provide a definition and an example or two of previous experiments on the subject. You can include figures with properly labeled text boxes (designated as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc) here to better illustrate your points.
2. Literature Review -justifying the research
This section of your experiment should further describe the rationale for the experiment. Here, you should demonstrate your knowledge of the concepts you will be investigating, and how this links to the experiment you will be conducting.
aim to answer the following:
– experimental aim
-hypothesis
– independent and dependent variables
– literature review of previous studies should be relevant to proposal idea
include: what the study was, methodology, findings, and relevance
Hypothesis
The next step is to formulate a research question or hypothesis that your experiment will test. This hypothesis should be clearly expressed in just one sentence. For example, your hypothesis may be that if a group of Hult students are asked to imagine the attributes of a typical professor just before they take a test, they will do better on the test than a group of Hult students asked to imagine the attributes of a soccer hooligan. Yes, this was an actual experiment – read an account and critique of it here if you like! Priming Intelligent Behaviour: An Elusive Phenomenon
Your hypothesis should describe and predict how your independent variable will impact your dependent variable. In the example above, the person imagined is the independent variable, and the test performance is the dependent variable.
4. Specific Aims (listed as Specific Aim 1, Specific Aim 2)
Propose a maximum of two specific aims to test your hypothesis. For example, with the hypothesis above, you may propose to investigate these two assumptions:
1. That intelligence can be primed
2. That priming effects are unconscious
5. Methods
In this section, you should describe in detail the methods you will use to test your hypothesis. Explain how you plan to test your hypothesis. How many students will you recruit? How will you carry out the experiment exactly (be verydetailed here)? Which cognitive task will you use? How will you collect, analyse and interpret the data?
6. Potential pitfalls and alternative strategies
Here, you need to discuss your experimental set-up and think about what you will do if your experiment does not work in the way you hoped it would. Are there any reasons why your experiment could fail? Do you have any strategies in place to fall back on if this happens? In the real world, this part of an experiment proposal is important to win the confidence of prospective funders of your experiment. Finally, in this section you should discuss the ethics of your proposal and any potential risks
7. References
Remember to cite all references following APA guidelines
