General description

In this assignment, psychological research is practised in a small scale. The task is done in small groups between 2-4 students. Your job is to create a research question and a research plan plus implement your research. At the end of the term, you shall present your research results to others. 

Topics for this assignment should be related to welfare. Possible topics include:

- sleep
- happiness
- love
- stress
- addiction
- eating behaviour
- social interaction
- flow and 
- creativeness.

Two or more groups can have the same topic, but most of the topics should be covered during one course. Of course, you can choose topics outside of the list above and combine different topics, but remember to ask for the teacher's approval, if you do so. The main thing is that you try to study a phenomenon related to welfare.

IMPORTANT! There are four research types for this task: (1) experiment, (2) observation, (3) interview and (4) survey/questionnaire. Your research should follow ONE of these research types. Within one class, all four research types must be covered in this task. In other words, within one study group, all research types should be represented at least by one group. See this link for further instructions or scroll down the page. 

What should you do?

I Create your research question. What do you want to find out from your topic related to welfare? It goes without saying that your research question should be in form of a question. The more simple and concrete your research question is, the better it is for this assignment. Try to think what kind of research type fits the best for your question. 

(Ib Not compulsory. Choose an existing theory or develop your own theory. Since we don’t have that much time to cover genuine psychological theories related to the topics, you can skip this part. But if you want to, you can try to find an existing theory or develop your own theory.)

II Form a hypothesis based on your research question (and possible theory). What will be the presumed outcome of your research? What kind of results do you expect? Formulate your hypothesis in a way that it can either get support from research results or be falsified by your research results.

III Choose a suitable research type for your research. Remember, your options are: (1) experiment, (2) observation, (3) interview and (4) survey/questionnaire. Number of participants doesn't have to be that big. The main thing is that you just practice one research type used in scientific psychology. See this link for further instructions or scroll down the page. 

IV Choose a suitable research setting for your research. If you go for experiments, try to arrange a laboratory-kind environment in our school. If you go for observations, you can conduct it in a natural environment or in a laboratory-kind environment. Interviews can be done in a setting that is most comfortable for your participant(s). Surveys/questionnaires are most convenient when done as online surveys. You can be creative with this. 

V Compile  research plan based on the stages mentioned above. This helps you to actually implement your research. Remember, this is only a small-scale practise of psychological research. The research doesn’t have to be perfect and the number of participants doesn’t need to be that big.

VI Implement your research! This is the fun part!

VII Gather your research results and compile a PowerPoint or similar where you explain the whole research process (parts I to VII) with results. (E.g. number of participants, exact methodology, percenteges,  etc.) In addition, try to evaluate your research. Were you able to produce scientific knowledge? Don't forget to contextualize your research for the audience. Prepare to present your research presentation to others.

Please note! The actual research doesn't have to be successful. Everything can go horribly wrong, but you can still get the best possible grade. The main thing is that you practice scientific research and reflect the nature of it. Evaluation of the process is the key.

Assessment criteria

20 points
- Research is contextualized for the audience in an excellent manner
- Research question and hypothesis are clearly and well formulated
- Presentation explains the research process and the results clearly and in a highly understandable manner
- Research process is evaluated excellently

15 points
- Research is contextualized for the audience well, with only some minor drawbacks
- Research question and hypothesis are clearly formulated, but they have some incongruences with the actual research
- Presentation explains the research process and the results in an understandable manner for the most part
- Research process is evaluated well, with only some minor flaws

10 points
- Research is contextualized for the audience, but with some major drawbacks
- Research question and hypothesis are formulated, but they have several incongruences with the actual research
- Presentation explains the research process and the results in an understandable manner only partially
- Research process is evaluated, but with some major flaws

5 points
- Research is contextualized for the audience very poorly, but there is still some connection to the actual research
- Research question and hypothesis are poorly formulated, but they have some relationship to the actual research
- Most of the research process and the results are explained unclearly and not in an understandable manner
- Research process is evaluated poorly with major flaws

0 points
- Research is not contextualized for the audience at all
- Research question and hypotheses are not formulated
- Presentation doesn’t explain anything about the research process or the results
- Research process is not evaluated at all