You basically have to design a hypothetical study and explain its methods. (again this is hypothetical and the predictions and results will be hypothetical as
well .
Draft of method/results (4-5 pages, double-spaced, 1 inch margins)
This paper should also have a title (you can use the same one as the intro/literature review
assignment unless your ideas have evolved to the point that you would want to change the title)
and 4-5 pages of text, including separate sections for “Method” and “Results”. Also, include a
reference section if needed. For example, if you are going to administer a scale that measures
Rape Myth Acceptance, you would cite the paper that introduced that scale and includes that citation in a reference section.
The Method section should clearly indicate what kind of study you are planning (e.g.,
interview, survey, focus group, experiment). It should provide complete and clear details about the participants (who they are including demographic
information, how many, etc.) and the procedures and materials. For example, if you are conducting a survey, you will want to provide information about
different scales that you are going to include in the survey. If you’re still
looking for a published scale, it’s ok (for this draft) to say that you haven’t found one yet, but you should include a descriiption of what it is that the scale will
measure (the “conceptual”
variable). For example, if you want to measure survivor guilt in survivors of attempted rape, but haven’t found a published scale for this kind of guilt, you can
describe what you mean by
“survivor guilt” (perhaps with a reference to an article where this idea is discussed) and say that you’re searching for a scale. If you are conducting an
interview or focus group study, including a
rough draft of your questions as an appendix to this milestone assignment. For more detail about what kinds of information is included in a method section
for the type of study you are designing, look at published examples of that type of study.
The Results section should include a descriiption of what you expect to find if you were to conduct the study. You can write either in the future tense (e.g.,
“Participants will be 150
college students, ages 18-24”, “We expect that rape myth acceptance will be higher in men than in women. Figure 1 presents a bar graph showing the
expected size of this difference.”) or
(pretending that you’ve actually done the study) you can write in the past tense (e.g.,
“Participants were 150 college students,” “Rape myth acceptance was higher in men than in women (see Figure 1)”). It’s useful to try to be as specific and
precise as possible in your expected results. For example, predicting that people who were exposed to “rape-supportive”
music lyrics will have higher scores on rape myth acceptance than people exposed to “rapecritical” music lyrics or neutral lyrics are somewhat vague because there’s no statement about whether the “rape-critical” and neutral groups will differ. A
really specific prediction for the results of this experiment would be to create a bar graph with predicted specific scores on rape myth acceptance for each of
the three groups. This assignment will be evaluated as follows:
Methodology type. (10%). Is the methodology clearly stated (interview, experiment, etc.)?
Participants subsection (20%). Is complete information on participants provided, including demographics? Is this information clearly presented?
Measures/procedure subsection (30%). Is complete information provided concerning what was done to participants and what is being measured? For
quantitative research,
independent/predictor variables and dependent/outcome variables should be clear. It’s ok if you’re still searching for scales as long as you say this, and state
the conceptual variable or manipulation.
Results (30%). Are specific predictions made? Are these clearly stated, in the same language that was used in the Method section (e.g., concerning variable
names)? How much
detail is provided?
Surface elements (10%.) APA format, spelling, grammar, proofreading.