Assignment Details:

You can choose one study from the following list for your lab report:

1. Does age influence the depth of processing effects on recall (Study1_data.sav)?
2. The habituation effect of a drug on motor activity (Study2_data.sav)
3. Does depressive symptom changes as a response to an earthquake? (Study3_data.sav)

You will need to do for Report task:

1) Choose a research question and an associated data set from a below list

2) Although our focus is on research methods and data interpretation, you need to know the background information of each study. You will need to read the relevant papers for the study. The original papers which data sets are based on were provided on LMS. You should also demonstrate your ability to find relevant studies and use them to introduce your topic and formulate hypotheses in your introduction.

The same principle is applicable to your discussion. You need to compare your results with previous studies and back up your statements with evidence (i.e., empirical studies). You’re expected to include at least two additional papers for your lab report apart from the provided paper.

3) After checking normality of your data (you also need to make comments based on your SPSS outputs for normality:

a. Run an appropriate statistical analysis
b. Write the result and discussion sections based on your statistical results
c. For discussion, you are required to discuss the sample size of the study in comparison to an estimated a priori sample size. For this, you will need to run a power analysis using G*Power. You can download G*Power for free: http://www.gpower.hhu.de/en.html.
d. Include a sentence addressing ethics. Let’s assume that we obtained ethics approval from our ethics committee. You can use “2019/123” for your ethics number.
e. Discuss the pros and cons of the research design the study you chose in the discussion

Here is the overview of each study:

Study 1: Does age influence the depth of processing effects on recall?

The data set for study 1 is modified from a study reported by Howell [Howell, D.C. (2013). Fundamental statistics for the behavioral sciences (8th ed), Wadsworth: Australia].

As we age, it appeared that we struggle to remember things compared to when we were younger. Eysenck (1974) instructed participants to recall lists of words to which they had been exposed under conditions that required different levels of processing. He was interested in determining whether a number of words they can recall were related to the level at which material was processed initially. He was interested in whether level-of-processing notions using five different levels of the processing could explain differences in recall between older and younger participants.

If older participants do not process information as deeply, they might be expected to recall fewer items than would younger participants, especially in conditions that entail greater processing. The study included 50 participants 18 through 30 years of age and 50 participants 55 through 65 years of age.

Study 2: The habituation effect of a drug on motor activity

This data set is taken from Howell [Howell, D.C. (2013). Statistical Methods for Psychology, 8th Edition, Cengage Learning: USA]. King and colleagues (King, Bouton, & Musty, 1987) investigated motor activity in rats following the injection of a drug called midazolam. The first time that this drug is injected, it typically leads to a distinct decrease in motor activity. Like morphine, however, tolerance for midazolam develops rapidly.

King examined whether acquired tolerance could be explained on the basis of a conditioned tolerance related to the physical context in which the drug was administered. He used three groups, collecting the crucial data on only the last day, which was the test day. During pretesting, two groups of animals were repeatedly injected with midazolam over several days, whereas the Control group was injected with physiological saline.

Study 3: Does depressive symptom changes as a response to an earthquake?

The data set is from Howell [Howell, D.C. (2013). Fundamental statistics for the behavioral sciences (8th ed), Wadsworth: Australia]. Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991) accidentally administered a measure of depression to college students three weeks before the Loma Prieta earthquake in California in 1989. This was a major earthquake that would be expected to have measurable effects on students. Having collected these data, they went out and collected repeated data to track adjustment. The data set you can use is not exactly the same but is modeled loosely on their findings. As this is an observational study, you may want to comment on the strengths/limitations of this type of design.