HPS121 A Lab Report Assessment

Assessmenttaskoverview

Welcometoyourguidetoyourfirstassessmenttask!

DO:Setasidesometimetoreadthismindfullyandenthusiastically,andyouwillbewellonyour way to writing a good assignment. If questions arise, write down a list of yourquestions,andpost themonthe discussionboard!

DONT: Take one look at the length of the document, panic, and read it in a hurry or hidefrom it for a few weeks. Trust us, this document is your friend, and the unit team is here tohelpyouifanythingisneworconfusing!

In addition to engaging with this document, you will need to attend your weekly one-hourseminars and ask your tutor questions in order to do well on this assignment task. In yourseminars, you will learn that a lab reportis a scientific write up of a study you haveconducted. In this case, you are not designing your own study and conducting it fromscratch, we are going to provide you with an aim and research question for your study, butyouwillneedcomeupwithyourownhypotheses andwritearationaleforwhythe studyis

important.Wehavealsodesignedthemethodofthestudyandwillconducttheresearchfor you (you can be participant!), but you will be writing up the method section as if youdesignedit yourself.

In Assessment task 1 (AT1): Part A of your Lab Report, described in this document, you willbewritingtheintroduction(rationaleforyourstudy)andmethodsectionofyourlabreport.The later sections of the lab report (the Results, Discussion, and Abstract) will formAssessment task 2 (AT2): Part B of your Lab Report (and there will be a separate guide tocoverAT2).

The key takeaway here is, even though we are providing you with a topic and helping yourun the study, we want you to write it up as if it were your very own research. And it willindeed be a completely new study, run in your trimester, with your fellow students (andmaybeeven yourself!)asthe participants.

Why amI writing alabreport?

You might be asking yourself, why am I writing a lab report in psychology? There are twokey reasons why writingalabreportis anessentialskillfor psychologicalscience.

1.Tolearnhowtoengagewithscientificevidence,andunderstandwhatinformationistrustworthy

Thisisachievedbyreadingandevaluatingpriorstudiesandbysimulatingtheexperienceofconducting your own study, so that you can gain insight into how studies are actuallyconductedanddiscovertheirpotentiallimitationsandstrengths.

Understanding this will help you not just if you choose to become a researcher in the future,but also if you choose to become a psychologist of any kind, because all psychologicalpractice needs to be evidence based, i.e., psychologists help people by using what has beendemonstrated to be effective by science. Even if you choose to not be a psychologist, youwill gain a better understanding of how to know what information in the world istrustworthy,whichis useful forday-to-day lifeandinmanyfields.

ThisalignswithULO3fortheunit:Demonstrateability tosummariseandcriticallyanalysepsychologyresearch

2.Tolearnhowtocommunicateeffectively

Written communication is one of the most important skills you will develop at university.This lab report will teach you how to synthesise and evaluate information in order to drawyour own conclusions and communicate them to the reader. This is a skill that is challengingand takes time to develop, which is why we want to start teaching you this as early aspossible.

ThisalignswithULO4fortheunit:Construct,synthesise,andclearlycommunicate

Labreporttopic

Hopefullyweveconvincedyouthatwritingalabreportisaworthwhileendeavour.Lets

takeadeeperlookatwhatexactlyyouwillwriting yourlabreportabout.

Participation in thestudy

We will be collecting the data for your very own research study via an online questionnairein Weeks 1-2 of the trimester. This means that you and your HPS121/HPY713 student peersfrom this trimester will be the participants for the study you will write about in your labreport. Participation in the study is completely voluntary, meaning whether or not youwouldlike toparticipateis uptoyou.Itprovidesyouwiththe optiontoexperience whatitislike to be a participant of the research and should help you gain a better understanding ofthe methodsneeded towrite yourmethodsections.

If you have not yet taken the questionnaire but would like to participate, please do notread furtheruntilyouhavecompleted thequestionnaire.

Clickhereto takepartin thesurvey:TaketheSurvey

Backgroundinformation

There is research to suggest that there are emotions called self-transcendent emotions,which, when felt, are thought to cause a shift from being self-focused to having a broader,moreuniversal,perspective.These emotions includegratitude andawe.There are

individual differences in the frequency and intensity with which people experience theseemotions,andtheir averagetendenciestoexperiencetheseemotionsiscalledtheir

dispositional awe or gratitude. Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest thatindividuals with a greater tendency to experience awe and gratitude may have betterwellbeing.

Youwillbereviewing thisresearchinorder todeveloparationaleforyourownstudyonthistopic. You will need to make an argument that this topic is valuable and worth studying, andyou will need to provide a clear rationale for your hypotheses (i.e., explain what informedyour educatedguessaboutwhattheresults of yourownstudy will be).

Aim

Theaimofyouruniquestudyinthistopicareaisasfollows:

To investigate the relationship between the dispositional tendencies to experience two self-transcendent emotions (gratitude and awe) and wellbeing in a sample of Australianstudents.

Hypotheses

You will read the evidence in the provided journal articles and also do your own literaturesearch to find more evidence to help you determine whether you think that wellbeing willbe positively correlated, negatively correlated, or unrelated with the two self-transcendentemotions (gratitudeandawe)inoursample.

A positive correlation means that those who experience the emotion more have betterwellbeing, and those who experience the emotion less have worse wellbeing. A negativecorrelationmeansthatthosewhoexperiencetheemotionmorehaveworsewellbeing,andthose whoexperiencethe emotionlesshave betterwellbeing.

Youwillmaketwo hypotheses:

1. You will hypothesise whether, based on the literature you have read, you think awe willbepositivelyassociated,negativelyassociated,orunassociatedwith wellbeing inyourstudy.
2. You will hypothesise whether, based on the literature you have read, you think gratitudewill be positively associated, negatively associated, or unassociated with wellbeing inyour study.

Wewillprovideyoutheresultsof thestudyfor AT2:LabReportPartB.Sofor now,youwillnot know what the outcome of the study will be, you are just making an educated guess,basedonthe pastresearch, topredictwhatwill happeninyour newresearchstudy.

Labreportstructure

Part A of your lab report includes the following sections, in this exact order: Title page,Introduction, Method, and References. See below for more details of what is required ineach.

Titlepage

• Mustfollowguidelines foranAPAstylecover page.
• Thismustbethefirstpageofyourassessmentandbeonepagein
• Mustincludeauniquetitlethatyoucomeupwithtorepresentthe study.
• Itmustincludeyouruniquetitle,yourname,yourstudent number,theunitcodeand the assessment (AT1: Lab Report Part A), your unit chair, the date yousubmitted,andthefinalword
• Youshouldalsoincludeapagenumberoneachpageofthe

Introduction

Theintroductionhastwokeypurposes:

1. Tomakeanargumentthatthistopicisvaluableandworthstudying
2. Tobuildarationaleforyourhypotheses(provideenoughbackgroundinformationtomake aneducatedguessaboutwhatwillhappen inyourstudy)

Inwritingtheintroduction,youshouldeffectivelyanswerthefollowingquestions:

• Whyisitimportanttoinvestigatethetopic?
• Whatdoweknowaboutthe topic?(Thisis whereyouwillevaluatethe literaturetodetermine what the relation between the variables seems to be based on pastresearch)
• What is relatively unknown about this topic/relation? (This is the gap your study willaddress if there is already past research on the topic, why is your new studyneeded?)
• What information can we use to help make a prediction about this gap? (If yourstudyisgoing tobeabitdifferentfrompriorstudies,howcanwemakeaneducatedguess about what will happen? Will the findings be the same or different? Is there alogicalinferencethatcanbemade?)
• Whatistheaimofyourstudyandwhatareyourhypotheses?(Note:theaimhasbeenprovidedtoyouabove,andyouwillcome upwithyour ownhypotheses!)

*Importantnote:Makesurethatyoudefineallyourkey termsclearlyinyourownwordsastheycomeupinyourIntroduction(i.e.,avoiddirectquotes).

Method

ThepurposeoftheMethodsectionistoletthereaderknow:

1. Whotheparticipantsinthestudywere
2. Howyoumeasuredthe key variables
3. Howthestudywasconductedandwhattheparticipantsdid

TheMethodsectionhasthreesubsectionscorrespondingtothesethreeareas:Participants,Measures, and Procedure. What you write in each section should effectively address thefollowingquestions:

Participants:

• Howwereparticipantsselected(i.e., sampled)?
• Whowere they?
• Howmanyparticipantswerethere?
• Whatwasthe averageage ofthe participants?
• Whatwasthegenderbreakdownoftheparticipants?

Measures:

• Howdidyoumeasureeachofthe key variables?Foreachvariable:
  • Whatwas thenameofthescaleandwhatdoes itmeasure?
  • Howmanyitemsdoes thescalehave?
  • Howmanypointswereonthescaleandwhatweretheendpoints?(E.g.,a7-pointLikertscale rangingfromNot atalltoVeryfrequently).
  • Whatis anexampleitem?

Procedure:

• Wasthestudyethicallyapprovedandwereparticipantsinformedaboutthenatureofthe study?Didparticipantsgive theirexplicitconsentbefore participating?
• Whatdidparticipantsdoandinwhatorder?Howlongdidittake themtodothis?

*Important note: In order to learn more about how to structure and write your lab report,youwill needtoattendyourseminars.

References

When writing a lab report you are using evidence from prior studies to help support theneed for your study and build a rationale for your hypothesis. The researchers whoconducted these studies need to be given credit for their ideas, so you will need to citethem in your work. In psychology, we use APA 7^thedition style referencing in order to givecredit to these researchers both by using in-text citations, and by listing all the articles youincluded in your Introduction and Method at the end of the document. It is yourresponsibility to learn how to use APA formatting, and you will need to guide your ownlearning in this process. The Deakin guide to APA7, including plenty of handy examples, canbe foundhere:APA7referencingguide

Wehaveselectedthreekeyreferencesthatyou mustciteinyourlabreport.Inaddition,you will need to search the scientific literature via the Deakin library to find and cite at least1 additional reference to support your arguments. Only one additional reference is required,but you can use as many articles as you need to make a strong argument for your study andhypotheses. More articles are not necessarily better. You will not be evaluated on thequantityof articles,butrather,onhowwellyouusethemtomakeyour arguments.

The full text of your references can be accessed via Cloud Deakin. When youve completedreading this document, the next thing you should do for your lab report is access yourreadings and get started on reading through them! Then, in your seminars, we will guideyouthroughhowtosearchthe literaturefor yourownadditionalreference.

Reference 1: Self-transcendent emotions and their social functions: Compassion, gratitude,and awe bind us together prosocially. Use this article to help you understand how to definegratitude andawe.

Reference2:Ameta-analyticreviewoftherelationshipbetweendispositionalgratitudeand well-being. Use this article to help you form your hypothesis about the relationshipbetweengratitudeandwellbeing.

Reference 3: Why are people high in dispositional awe happier? The roles of meaning inlifeandmaterials.Usethisarticletohelpyouformyourhypothesisabouttherelationshipbetweenaweandwellbeing.