Topic: if listening to music while studying will make people…

Research Proposal:

The final paper in this course is a research proposal of an original factorial design study on any topic in Psychology. The goals of the paper are to demonstrate your ability to:

select, understand and explain 2 research articles from the Psychology literature,

formulate an original research idea based on those articles and

design a 2 x 2 factorial design.

Your design must include at least 1 IV that is manipulated the other may be a participant-variable or

a second manipulated variable.

The proposal will consist of:

Introduction

Define & describe the topic of your proposal. This must be based on the literature.

Literature Review

Summarize two research articles that are related to your topic. Focus on information from the articles that is directly related to your proposal.

State the purpose of your study.

Explain the rationale for your study, based on the literature. How did the findings or ideas in these articles lead to your proposed study?

Briefly explain your method being sure to include descriptions of both independent variables and the dependent variable.

State your hypotheses – you must mention 3 hypotheses – 2 for the main effects and one for the

Method

Participants

Describe who would be in the study, the number of participants you think you would need to have enough power in the design and any restrictions on who could be in the study.

Materials

Describe in detail how you would operationally define your variables. This must be as detailed as if you actually carried out the study. If it is appropriate, find a scale or measure in the literature to measure your dependent variable instead of creating one.

Procedure

Describe the proposed design and explain step-by-step what participants would do in your study.

Results

You will not have any actual data to analyze, but you need to explain how it would be done. Operationally define your dependent variable explain the possible range of scores and how you would measure reliability if you need to

Explain how you would test your hypotheses (using a 2 x 2 ANOVA) and the results you would expect if your hypotheses are supported.

Discussion

Re-state the purpose of your experiment and the hypotheses.

Explain how you would interpret your findings if your hypotheses were supported.

Discuss any limitations with the research.

End with the conclusion you would draw from your study assuming it was successful. How can this be applied, why is this information useful

What would you suggest to other researchers looking at this topic, where are there still gaps, what should future researchers focus on?