For your final paper, you will report on your experience conducting a social psychology experiment and explain the outcome. You are essentially creating an informal version of the ‘Results’ and ‘Discussion’ sections of a professional research paper.
Critically address elements of the study design and your implementation and include information about how your data fits in with established theory (or does not). It is ok to speculate and it is ok if your experiment seems to flop! Compare and contrast your experience to the research ideals described in Chapter 9.
Address as many of the following questions as possible:
What did your results show? How does or does not your data support your hypothesis?
How can you explain your results based on established theory/ course concepts?
How much control did you exert over your variables? Was your treatment impactful? (internal validity, experimental realism)
Did you detect any biases in your data collection? Any interesting or unexpected additional observations?
How generalizable are your conclusions? Was your treatment realistic? (external validity, mundane realism)
Did you come across problems? What would you do differently next time?
What is the importance of your findings?
What do you recommend as a next step (new hypotheses or alternate methods) in this broad area of research? Why?
Be as thorough and specific as possible and provide rationale and explanations for your answers. Refer to your textbook as needed (different experiments will draw from different topics and chapters).
Also be sure to attach a copy of your data and any pertinent materials (e.g. surveys, tables, etc.).
I will be attaching the survey questionnaire and the experiment planning document below. I have not yet conducted the experiment, and I would need help with that also
