IB Psychology: Internal Assessment

Patricia George IB SL Psychology June 2013

IB Psychology
Internal Assessment

Contents
Introduction to Internal Assessment
IB Guidelines Sources Participants Control Ethics Data Writing a Report

How to chose your topic:

True Experiment - IV/DV Selecting a topic example of research Paperwork (Marking criteria, workbook; example coursework for us to mark)

The Task
oReplicate an experiment that manipulates an independent variable

oWrite a report conforming to IB guidelines

Step 1: The Experiment

Guidelines:

n Ensure that the study has an IV that you can manipulate (not gender/age/culture) n Your research question should be important. If you can not find at least a few sentences in a standard psychology text about the research you plan to replicate, think again. n You must clearly justify your hypothesis n You can not deceive, harm, or ask your participants to eat or drink any substances n You are not expected to conduct a perfect experiment

Step 2: Locating Sources

o Locate a copy of the original experiment

o Find at least 3 other studies

o Analyze all of these studies by breaking them down into research design elements, theory and conclusions

o Avoid too many internet sources

Step 3 Selecting your participants

o The sixth form group will probably be your target population

o Sample, ideally random, although you can select an opportunity sample, but you will have to justify why you did this

o An ideal sample is 50 students giving you two groups of 25. (If you have some people who do not turn up, you will still have 20 per group which is a good sample size)

Step 4 Your participants

o Signed informed consent forms must be obtained (You will provide a copy of the consent form in your appendix)

o Do not use students younger than 16 (you would require parental and other consent)

o You must keep all forms and ensure the confidentially of data

o You must collect relevant data from the participants e.g. age, etc. You will report any relevant characteristics

Step 5: Ensuring Control

o The two groups in your experiment should be treated exactly the same except for the IV

o All instructions to the groups should be scripted to ensure they are identical

o All other conditions should be identical as far as possible. Note any inadvertent differences in treatment and discuss in your report

Step 6 Ethical Considerations

oRemind participants that they are free to leave the experiment at any time

oDebriefing: All participants must be informed of the results of your experiment

Step 7 The Data

o Keep a careful record of all the raw data this has to be included in the appendix of your report.

o You are just required to give descriptive statistics

o Measure of central tendency o Measure of dispersion

o You should also have some sort of visual representation of your data.

Writing Your Report

o You MUST follow the IB guidelines o Common omissions:
no abstract; data not displayed in three ways i.e. words, tables and graphs; sources not cited, no Works Sited page; no appendices (sample informed consent form, raw data, statistical test calculations, scripted instructions)

o You must write like in a typical journal paper like a psychologist o Handouts
o Workbook o Assessment criteria

How to choose your IA topic

The moment has come to choose your topic

A replication of a published study Your IA must be A true experiment Simple

Ethical

14

Are these investigations Ethical?

Name Link (or use your texts) Descrip6on

Asch, S. (1950s)

Conformity (page 127 Pearson textbook)

Several studies into conformity.

Bandura, A., Ross D. Social Learning and Ross, S.A. (1961) (page 121 Pearson textbook) Peterson, L.R. and Memory Peterson, M.J. (1959) (See slide 7 for a summary) Stroop, J.R. (1935) Cogni6ve Processing (See slide 8 for a summary)

Research into the transmission of aggression through children imita6ng aggressive adult role models. Inves6ga6ng decay in short-term memory. Automa6c cogni6ve processing, and interference in verbal reac6ons.

15

It has to be a True Experiment?

One IV One DV Result

That is manipulated to affect

That is measured to determine

The effect of the IV on the DV, as measured using descriptive measures of central tendency and dispersion.

There is either one experimental group and one control group, or two experimental groups, each under different conditions. Other variables are controlled.
16

For success

17

Here we go!
My IA Topic Study replicated Aim Variables - IV Variables DV Variables - Controlled

18

Some research possibilities

Peterson and Peterson (1959) duration of STM Stroop (1935) effects of divided attention Loftus and Palmer (1974) effects of leading questions

19

20

Attention: J.R.Stroop (1935) see previous PowerPoint for more details

Stroop (1935) noted that observers were slower to properly identify the colour of ink when the ink was used to produce colour names different from the ink. That is, observers were slower to identify red ink when it spelled the word blue. This is an interesting finding because observers are told to not pay any attention to the word names and simply report the colour of the ink. However, this seems to be a nearly impossible task, as the name of the word seems to interfere with the observer's ability to report the colour of the ink. Abstract: In this study pairs of conflicting stimuli, both being inherent aspects of the same symbols, were presented simultaneously (a name of one colour printed in the ink of another colour -- a word stimulus and a colour stimulus). The difference in time for reading the words printed in colours and the same words printed in black is the measure of the interference of colour stimuli upon reading words. The difference in the time for naming the colours in which the words are printed and the same colours printed in squares is the measure of the interference of conflicting word stimuli upon naming colours. Reference: Stroop, J.R., 1935. Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28, 643-662. Republished http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/Cognition/Papers/stroop %201933.pdf

21