HPS104 Foundations of Psychological Science THE RESEARCH ISSUES The Assignment for HPS104 is in the form of a Research Design Project (50%) in four parts, with each part requiring that you correctly answer some Short Answer Questions (SAQs). • Part A – Formulation and Research Design (20%) – comprehension of the fundamentals • Part B –Design Justification (10%) – analysing and justifying • Part C – Design Implementation (10%) – implementing the design • Part D – Plain Language Statement (10%) – the ethics of the implementation Think of the four parts of the assignment as testing the What, Why, and How of research designs. As an aside, note that the first part of your final exam (worth 30%) is in the form of multiple choice questions that test your ability to remember key concepts in the unit. Performing well in these basic memory-type questions and completing Part A of the Assignment should take you close to passing this unit (depending on how well you do on the exam). And that’s all the marks we’ll allocate for knowing and remembering in this unit! The remaining parts of the Assignment will be dedicated to allowing you to demonstrate your ability to analyse, apply and synthesize on the basis of your newfound knowledge. You’ll need to do well on these parts of the assignment to achieve a Credit or Distinction grade in the unit. Oh, and the final assessment component of this unit – the second part of the final exam (worth 20%) – will allow you to demonstrate the highest level of learning in the context of research and research designs – the ability to evaluate and resolve novel challenges using the skills you have acquired in this unit. Your only chance at a HD in this unit is to complete these ‘challenge’ exam questions effectively. But it won’t be easy! We’ll talk more about exam later in the unit… Now, back to the Assignment. The first step in completing the Assignment SAQs is to choose ONE research issue from the list of three issues that appear on the following pages of this document. It doesn’t matter which issue you choose. I suggest that you pick the one that interests you the most. But you must stick with this same issue throughout the four parts of the Assignment. How you choose to address this issue (e.g., which design you use) can, however, evolve (and even change fundamentally) on the basis of feedback you receive from your tutor and as your learning in this unit develops. To help get you started, perhaps check out the completed answers I’ve given to Part A and Part B for a “fourth” research issue (this research issue is not an issue that you can choose, it’s just a made-up example to help you see what we want from you). I’ve not done the same for Parts C and D of the Assignment because I couldn’t think of a way of giving you worked-through examples without giving too much away! But what I have done is to provide notes for each part to give you a good idea of what we want from you. Please also consider checking out my Research Design Primer presentation. It’s my attempt to give you a fast-track into the types of research design we’ll be covering in this unit. Why? To give you a head start on the Assignment! And if you encounter terminology in my primer that is as-yet unfamiliar to you (IVs, DVs, internal validity, confounds, etc.), keep in mind that most of this terminology comes straight from Week 3. In terms of the style of your answers, try to provide clear, concise and precise answers to the SAQs. You don’t need to provide clever prose or pretty formatting here, just direct answers that are correct, thorough, and which utilise the concepts and terminology we’ve taught you in this unit. Wewant to tap into your decision-making processes in these tasks, not test your essay-writing prowess! You also don’t need to start doing background research into the issue you’ve chosen. This task (and this unit) isn’t about searching literature, it’s about conducting research! RESEARCH ISSUE #1 The relationship between brain injuries in youth and violent crimes in adulthood The frontal lobes of the brain are thought to be important for behavioural inhibition and moral reasoning. Brain scans of men incarcerated for violent crimes show reduced brain activity consistent with a history of damage to their frontal lobes. These anomalous brain scans have been interpreted as indicating that physical abuse experienced when young resulted in more concussive injuries (injuries associated with a temporary loss of consciousness), more damage to their frontal lobes leading to impaired behavioural inhibition and moral reasoning, and a greater likelihood of committing violent criminal acts later in life. Others doubt this interpretation and argue instead that the frontal lobe damage detected in brain scans is possibly of more recent origin, the idea being that men with impaired behavioural inhibition and moral reasoning are simply more likely to get into fights and receive head injuries. We need to know which interpretation is right! But it won’t be easy. And remember, you’re a psychologist not a neurologist! So focus on psychological measures rather than brain scans. Consider measuring self-reported number of concussive episodes experienced by a person, and/or using one of many available self-report measures of childhood maltreatment (and yes, you can use made-up measures too!). RESEARCH ISSUE #2 The effectiveness of “Baby Think It Over” dolls in reducing teenage pregnancies Interactive “Baby Think It Over” dolls provide teenagers with a simulated experience of being a new parent. These robotic dolls often cry and need to be soothed, fed, changed, etc., just like a real baby. They are given to teenagers to care for as part of teen pregnancy prevention programs in the hopes that the experience is sobering and discourages them from becoming pregnant. However, there is emerging empirical evidence that caring for these dolls not only fails to deter teenage pregnancies but in some cases results in an increase in pregnancy rates! It is unclear why this might be, but there are anecdotal reports that some teenage girls seem to enjoy being part of pregnancy prevention programs because of the positive attention they receive from peers and family during their time with the doll. The influence of baby dolls needs to be understood as a matter of urgency given their widespread use in pregnancy prevention programs in Australia! Unfortunately, it is a difficult issue to investigate. First, robotic baby dolls are usually used as part of a wider pregnancy prevention program that includes seminars, psychoeducational materials, etc., and it might be these other factors that are problematic. Second, given the disparity in traditional gender roles in relation to parenting duties, the gender of the teenager is likely to be important. RESEARCH ISSUE #3 The speed of video evidence Juries often rely on evidence in the form of CCTV footage of an alleged crime. It is common practice for juries to be presented with the footage slowed-down to enable them to scrutinize the evidence more thoroughly. However, this practice has been criticised by forensic psychologists on the basis of empirical evidence that slowed-down footage may cause jurors to interpret a criminal act as more premeditated and thus judge the defendant to be more culpable. Indeed, juries presented withslowed-down footage are three times more likely to convict than juries presented with normalspeed footage of the exact same evidence! And this bias persists even when jurors are presented with both versions (slowed and original speed) of the footage and even if the footage is accompanied by a digital time display (to alert them to the fact that it is slowed down). Although it’s a robust effect you wonder if all jurors are affected equally, or whether certain jurors, with certain predispositions, are more vulnerable to the speed-of-footage effect. Of particular interest to you is the extent to which a juror holds authoritarian tendencies (i.e., the tendency to endorse rule-based authority indiscriminately and to blame/punish transgressors of this authority). The Legal Attitudes Questionnaire purports to measure this tendency in the legal context by asking people (including jurors) to respond to statements such as “The law coddles criminals to the detriment of society” (authoritarianism) versus “Unfair treatment of underprivileged groups and classes is the chief cause of crime” (non-authoritarianism). So, should slowed-down footage be banned altogether despite providing potentially better information to jurors, or is slowed-footage only problematic for jurors who happen to have authoritarian tendencies? Please try to find out! Oh, and when doing so please strive to obtain results that are going to be applicable to real-world/courtroom scenarios.