Observation Research Project

This is one of the two research papers you will be writing in this course. You may work in groups of two, but each of you must write your own paper. The paper must contain all the parts of a research paper:

Title Page

This must be in APA style. Don’t use the words “A Study of” or “An Observation of” in the title.

Abstract

A very brief summary of the contents of your article. This should be no more than 150 words (the APA style guide recommends 120).

Introduction

The introduction gives the background of the problem you are investigating. This is where you summarize previous research in the area. You must have at least two references in your paper. Don’t go into excessive detail about the references; as the APA guide says, “Assume that the reader is knowledgeable about the field for which you are writing and does not require a complete digest.” (American Psychological Association, 2001, p. 16)

After the historical review, explain the purpose of your observation, and give your main hypothesis and any alternate hypotheses.

Method

This can be broken into subsections that talk about the participants, apparatus (if you need any), and procedure. Write this section in the past tense. This doesn’t mean you have to wait until the observation is finished to start writing; you can plan out your method (in fact, you’d better do that before you start observing!) and write it down as if it had already occurred. After all, when you finish the observation, it will have.

Results

If you are using a t statistic, you must include a table giving at the very least the mean and standard deviations for your observational groups. You must also include a graph, complete with error bars. If you are using a χ² squared statistic, you must include a table giving the frequencies. (This is dangerously close to being your raw data, but I am asking you to do this so that I know you can do a table in APA style.) Do significance testing on your results.

Discussion

Evaluate your results in light of your hypothesis or hypotheses. Begin with a clear statement of the support or rejetion of your original hypothesis. You may wish to compare your results to previous results in the field.

References

These must be in APA style.

Process

Pre-review

Before you start your observations, you will write part of the abstract, introduction (your area of research and your hypotheses), the method section of your paper, and the references. Obviously, you can’t include information about the number of participants, nor the results that you obtained, as you haven’t done the observing yet. This pre-review material will be due on 28 October 2008. During lab that day, another student will assess your paper using this scale

Peer Review

The first draft of your observation and paper must be complete by 4 November 2008. Another student will assess your paper using this scale, and return the assessment to me on 6 November 2008. (This will take longer; there’s more to read than in the pre-review.)

Presentations / Final Version

Presentations will start on 11 Nov 2008. Presentations must a minimum of three minutes and a maximum of five minutes. Each presentation will be followed by a maximum of ten minutes of discussion. We will use lab time during those class sessions. I will use this scale to assess your presentations.

Final Version of Paper

The final version of the paper is due on 13 Nov 2008. Email the word processing document and Excel spreadsheet with your raw data to the instructor. The word processing documents should have a name of the form observation????.rtf (or .odt) and the spreadsheet should have a name of the form observation????.xls, where ???? is your four-digit identifier.

Reference

American Psychological Association (2001). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) Washington, DC: Author.