flowchart LR
A{Literature review} --> B{Project design}
A --> F[CITI certification]
F --> G[Annotated bibliography]
B --> H[Research proposal]
B --> C{Project deployment}
C --> I[Survey/experiment/etc]
C --> D{Data analysis}
D --> J[Descriptive statistics report]
D --> K[Inferential statistics report]
D --> E{Scholarly production}
E --> L[Poster Draft]
E --> M[Abstract Draft]
E --> N[Peer Review]
E --> O[APA Paper]
E --> P[Presentation]
Experimental Psychology: Project Manual
A guidebook for conducting your own research project
Project Overview
The following document is your companion manual for Experimental Psychology. This is a hands-on course in experimental psychology, the general name for the branch of psychology focused primarily on research. In this class, learning will be active, centering on your very own research project. You will work in groups for much of this process, but will turn in assignments and complete objectives both as a group and as an individual. This project manual will provide you with the tools and instructions necessary to complete your own research project. You will also find lots of tips, advice, and more throughout.
What follows below is a time line of what to expect as you pursue your very own project this semester. Diamonds in the diagram indicate major milestones in the development of your project, while rectangles reflect specific assignments due during those project phases. Subsequent chapters provide details about each step of this process.
Project time line
- Literature review
- Each group will have to find and read journal articles that are specifically related to their research topic. Groups will work together to create an annotated bibliography that summarizes each reference, including how it can be used to further the group’s project. These papers will help guide the design of each study, and will be cited in your final paper and/or poster presentation.
- Project design
- Based on your own questions and the information gained from your literature reviews, each group will be responsible for creating a research question, as well as one or more hypotheses. Working together with Dr. Van Horn, a study will be designed to test those hypotheses. For most students, this will be done via the creation of an online survey. The Research Proposal chapter provides information on how to approach this important step.
- Project deployment
- Once designed, each group will create and deploy their study. For example, for a survey, this step will involve creating an online survey, and then distributing this survey to a target sample of respondents.
- Data analysis
- Once enough participants’ data have been collected, each group will have to come up with and carry out an analysis of the resulting data. This analysis will be carried out in a way that enables each group to test their specific hypotheses.
- Scholarly production
- Abstract: Each group will work together to write an abstract, following APA style requirements, that summarizes the totality of the project. This abstract will be used in your final paper. For those that want to submit their project to Capital’s Symposium on Undergraduate Research (for extra credit), this abstract will also be the text that you submit for acceptance into the forum.
- Paper: An APA manuscript style journal article will be individually written by each group member that summarizes the entire project. The formatting for this paper is very specific, and is discussed at length later in this project manual.
- Poster and presentation: Each group will prepare and present an academic conference-style poster to the class. Similar to the final paper, this presentation will provide a succinct and visual summary of the entire research project.