Research Report

Introduction

The assignment consists of choosing a psychological causal model developed by other researchers (or developing a new psychological causal model), designing a psychological experiment, simulating data, organising and analysing those data, and presenting a research report, including a graph. The assignment contains 3 elements:

1. A graphical psychological causal model that shows the relationship between variables, and how the study will measure the causal relationship between these variables. 

2. An organised data frame of simulated data. 

3. A research report of maximum 750 words that follows the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 7th Edition.

Psychological causal model

In a separate page from the extended abstract, present a psychological causal model. For this assignment the causal model must have only two variables: one causal variable and one consequence variable, as shown below:

Variable X ---------> Variable Y

Data frame

Also separated from the extended abstract, present a data frame in a table with the following characteristic: Column 1: Participant number or ID

Column 2: Group 

Column 3: Dependent variable 

The data in that table will come from a template spreadsheet with the following content: 

The values in column 1 will be pre-populated and will have the numbers 1 to 100. This indicates that your experiment will have 100 participants.

The values in column 2 will be pre-populated with 0 in the first 50 rows and 1 in the following 50 rows. This indicates that your experiment will have two groups. You will have to replace 0 with the name of your control group and 1 with the name of your experimental group. 

The 100 rows in column 3 will have a formula to generate random numbers. It will be explained to you how to use this column to generate the values.

Research Report

The research report should contain the following sections: 

· Introduction: Explains the rationale of the study, including the psychological causal model. It states the hypothesis tested in the study. 

· Method: Contains the details necessary for another researcher to replicate the study. It includes the subsections “Participants”, “Material” and “Procedure”.

· Results: It presents descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (Independent samples t test), including a graph. [the graph is NOT included in the word count] 

· Discussion: It indicates whether the hypothesis was supported by the data, and it relates the results of the present study with previous research. It also discusses the limitations of the study and offers suggestions for future research. 

· References: A list of the references used in the previous sections. (This part is NOT included in the word count). You must include three references; no more and no less than three.

A template is attached below for your use.