Saturday December 1st, 4pm GMT

IA Feedback

First, the things that were well done:

The Experiment - reading the reports we could see that most of you had conducted your experiments very professionally and had been careful to follow ethical guidelines.

Also well done for…

Meeting the deadline – you all got your reports in on time!

Asking questions – many of you asked relevant questions before submitting your reports

Things that you need to improve

FormatMethod Section

Results

Discussion

REPORT

FORMAT

Problems: word count – do not use 20 when a few will do:• e.g. “I believe that the aim of my replication of

Loftus and Palmer’s original experiment will be approximately the same as theirs, and it is…..” 24 words

• “Similarly to Loftus and Palmer, my aim is….” 8 words

Title page - not correctly completedFont - use Times New Roman, size 12 Incomplete report - no abstract; no in-text

citations; references missing; materials list missing or incomplete; appendices incomplete, often with raw data and calculations missing.

Sections in wrong order or wrongly formatted - references wrongly formatted, design sections in wrong order; materials not referenced to appendix.

Wrong tense used – use past tense. This is a report of what you did.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?Read! Read!

And then correct your mistakes, following the advice given.

METHOD SECTIONDesign

• Justify choice of expt design

• Operationalize IV & DV - your DV is not your participants’ memories – it is the number of words remembered under each condition

Participants

• Explain use of opportunity sample

• Make sure to include relevant details of participants, and use them later in discussion.

Materials

• Complete list, including consent form, briefing and debriefing sheets, referenced to appendices.

Procedure

• Start right from the beginning and remember to include the giving and collecting of informed consent forms.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?Read! Read!

And then correct your mistakes, following the advice given.

RESULTS – table, graph and words!

• Raw data and calculations belong in the Appendices

• Choose one measure of central tendency and one measure of dispersion and justify your choice.

• Mean and standard deviation go together.• There are many websites that can help. For

example, see Measures of CT and dispersion

RESULTS

Mean of Group 1 - semantic processing

Mean of Group 2 - structural processing

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Mean number of words remembered under each con-dition

Mean number of words re-membered under each condition

No. of words

Graph the measure of central tendency only

RESULTS

• Add a table Group Mean* SD**1 (semantic processing)2 (structural processing)

• Say in writing why you chose these measures, and write exactly what your results were.

*Or median or mode** Or range or variance

WHAT SHOULD I DO?Read! Read!

And then correct your mistakes, following the advice given.

DISCUSSION (super-important!)• Compare ALL your results with the study being

replicated (measures of CT and of dispersion)• Use your data – if you gathered data on age,

gender, ability to drive, etc. and any of it was relevant to your aim, say so. If it proved to be of no significance, say so.

• Identify limitations accurately. (It is NOT true that more participants = more reliability!)

• Suggest improvements and extensions of the research

WHAT SHOULD I DO?Read! Read!

And then correct your mistakes, following the advice given.

THEN….

Do NOT submit this as your final work. Take a day or two and:Check it against the checklist we suppliedCheck it against the feedback your Pamoja

teacher gave you on your draftCheck it against the Psychology guide, both

the formatting advice and criteriaCheck it against the Course Companion advice

FINALLY

Submit it to the Dropbox, and relax,

knowing that 25% of your PSYCHOLOGY grade is

guaranteed to be good!