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Research Methods in Psychology Assignment -

Overview of this Assessment

The major assignment casts you into the role of a Research Psychologist. You will be required to analyse some data obtained from a research study and to write a report based on your findings. The assignment must be presented as a formal laboratory report (see example lab report as a writing guide) and should contain an abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, and reference sections. Given that this is a Research Methods unit, the assessment of your report will focus primarily on the results and discussion sections and this is reflected in the weighting of marks.

Thus, the primary aims of this assignment are to:

1. Develop your skills in using appropriate statistical techniques to test a specific research question,

2. Broaden your understanding of research designs,

3. Develop your report writing skills; particularly the ability to report statistical results, the ability to interpret statistical results in the context of past research, and to integrate previous work into a structured argument.

You will be provided with a data set, information about the study methods, and specific research questions.

Your task will be to analyse the data and then write a report on the results. Thus, you will need to draw on the skills you have been developing over the course of the trimester. You can consult the Seminar Activity Instructions documents on CloudDeakin for help with analysing the data and interpreting your output. Furthermore, a Blackboard Collaborate session (date to be advised in a News post) will be scheduled closer to the due date for any student queries regarding the assignment.

The main focus of the assessment is on your ability to understand, analyse and interpret the appropriate statistical analyses to test the hypotheses and to report the results correctly. Overall, your ability to write a psychology laboratory report (following APA conventions) as a whole will be assessed.

Unit Learning Outcomes - The assignment assesses, as students will need to autonomously conduct appropriate statistical analyses given specific research questions. As this assignment is a lab report, students will be required to defend conclusions drawn from obtained results (in the Discussion section). Finally, as a lab report, students will be expected to adhere to APA style guidelines.

Background to the study - Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a widespread concern in Australia and its prevalence is alarming. However, when we consider a broader typology of IPV, including non-physical types such as Coercive Controlling Violence (CCV) and Relational Aggression, this problem may be even larger. Understanding individual and personality factors that are predictive of these kind of behaviours is therefore important. One such constellation of personality factors is the Dark Tetrad. Research links narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism to IPV. The current study aimed to examine how individual factors such as age and gender, as well as the Dark Tetrad personality constructs, in combination and uniquely, predict non-physical IPV types.

Your lab report should address the following research questions:

1. Do age, gender, and the Dark Tetrad predict coercive controlling violence?

2. Do age, gender, and the Dark Tetrad predict relational aggression?

References -

• Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012, Personal Safety, Australia, viewed 28 April 2017.
• Carton, H., & Egan, V. (2017). The dark triad and intimate partner violence. Personality & Individual Differences, 105, 84-88. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.09.040.
• Kelly, J. B., & Johnson, M. P. (2008). Differentiation among types of intimate partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions. Family court review, 46(3), 476-499.
• Kiire, S. (2017). Psychopathy rather than Machiavellianism or narcissism facilitates intimate partner violence via fast life strategy. Personality and Individual Differences, 104, 401-406.
• Linder, J. R., Crick, N. R., & Collins, W. A. (2002). Relational aggression and victimization in young adults' romantic relationships: Associations with perceptions of parent, peer, and romantic relationship quality. Social Development, 11(1), 69-86.
• Morgan, A., & Chadwick, H. (2009). Key issues in domestic violence: Australian Institute of Criminology.
• Mouzos, J., & Makkai, T. (2004). Women's experiences of male violence: Findings from the Australian component of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) (Vol. 56): Australian Institute of Criminology Canberra.
• Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Toward a taxonomy of dark personalities. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(6), 421-426.
• Paulhus, D. & Williams, K. (2002). The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Personality, 36, 556-563. <- Shannon added this on 22/07/2019.
• Smoker, M., & March, E. (2017). Predicting perpetration of intimate partner cyberstalking: Gender and the Dark Tetrad. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 390-396.
• Stith, S. M., Smith, D. B., Penn, C. E., Ward, D. B., & Tritt, D. (2004). Intimate partner physical abuse perpetration and victimization risk factors: A meta-analytic review. Aggression and violent behavior, 10(1), 65-98.

Lab Report Sections -

You are required to submit a formal laboratory report for this assessment. The sections of the report are detailed below. As this is a research methods unit, the majority of the marks (70) are allocated to the results and discussion sections. Thus, your ability to report the results correctly and then interpret them appropriately is the main focus of the assessment.

Abstract - The abstract should be a summary of the rationale, methods, results, and conclusions of the report. This should be no longer than 150 words.

Things to include in this section...

• A brief statement of the study aim(s) [the word limit is too brief to include hypotheses]
• Important to mention which variables (not scale names) were measured (i.e., age, gender, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, coercive controlling violence, relational aggression), and also mention how many people participated in the study.
• Make reference to the method of statistical analysis (e.g., 'Multiple regression analyses revealed that...')
• State the relevance of findings to either prior theory and/or your study aim(s).

Introduction - The introduction needs to provide a succinct and directed review of the relevant literature on the issue of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Australia, the need to understand non-physical types of IPV, and key personality constructs (the Dark Tetrad) that are associated with such behaviours, and so on, and end with specific hypotheses related to the research questions. The most important thing to remember is that the introduction is providing an argument for the hypotheses to follow. Thus, you will need to develop specific hypotheses which address the research questions listed above. The hypotheses should flow smoothly and compellingly from the literature you have presented.

Questions to guide critical reading of references and write up of the Introduction section to your report:

1. Is IPV a problem in Australia? And do we need to look beyond physical IPV?

2. What is Coercive Controlling Violence? And what is Relational aggression?

3. What demographics and personality constructs predict IPV?

4. What is the Dark Triad/Tetrad, and are they related to IPV and/or non-physical types of IPV?

Method - In the method section you need to describe the participants, measures, and procedures which were utilised in the study. The important point to remember when writing a method section is that you need to provide enough information so that the experiment can be replicated by another researcher. We have provided the information pertaining to the measures and procedure for you to 'copy and paste' into your method section (Lab Report - Method). However, you will need to report on the sample size, age (include age range, Mean age and SD), and gender distribution (raw numbers and percentage) of the participants.

Results - Along with the discussion, this is the major component of the report and you will be assessed on your ability to conduct and report the statistical procedures. Thus, here you need to present the results of the study - only present and describe them; there should be no interpretation of the data at this point.

There are really two parts to the results section.

1. In the first, you should present the descriptive statistics for all variables in your multiple regression analyses. Include key descriptives such as means, standard deviations, and min/max values. Briefly (1-2 sentences) explain what you see in terms of means, range and/or SD (without repeating the statistics from the table) for the interpretability of your inferential stats. See the example lab report for a good example of how to do this. You only need to mention 1 or 2 constructs.

2. In the second part, you will present two multiple regression analyses. Make sure that these results are directly linked with your hypotheses (e.g., 'Multiple regression analyses were conducted to test ... It was found that ...').

As the trimester progresses, you will become familiar with the specific analyses that you will be conducting to answer these questions:

1. Do age, gender, and the Dark Tetrad predict coercive controlling violence?

Conduct a multiple regression to determine whether age, gender, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism are statistically significant predictors of coercive controlling violence. You will need to consider both the combined and unique contributions.

2. Do age, gender, and the Dark Tetrad predict relational aggression?

Conduct a multiple regression to determine whether age, gender, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism are statistically significant predictors of relational aggression. You will need to consider both the combined and unique contributions.

Discussion - The findings of the study should be discussed in relation to the aims and hypotheses presented in the introduction. You also need to discuss the findings with reference to prior research, in particular the literature that was cited in your introduction (this should forma a substantial part of your Discussion). There should be clear statements as to whether the hypotheses were supported.

It is generally a good idea to discuss one or two limitations. However, these limitations should be relevant to your specific research design rather than generic limitations (such as 'correlation/regression does not imply causality' or 'the sample size wasn't large enough'). Even better is to explain how these limitations may have impacted your findings and could be overcome in future research.

Questions to help you write up your discussion section:

1. How do the present findings inform your research question(s)? (i.e., were the hypotheses supported? What do the results mean?)

2. How do findings advance current knowledge in this area?

3. Were there any factors that may limit the conclusions you draw from this data?

4. What questions still/now need to be resolved? (i.e., future research directions)

Critical Reflection Piece - You are required to write a 500 word piece critically reflecting on the following questions:

1. - why are your chosen analyses appropriate for your research questions?

2. - identify and elaborate on one key aspect of the study design (e.g., the research design, the variables, or the research questions) that, if changed, would require a different analysis. Explain your thinking.

3. - what would you argue is the biggest limitation of your study and what are the implications of this weakness for your findings?

4. - what might you do in terms of study design to overcome the weakness you identified in the previous question?

Attachment:- Psychology Statistics Assignment Files.rar