Assignment: Therapy For Depression
In each of the following cases, identify which experimental design was used and why the researcher may have chosen that design.
In order to compare the effectiveness of two different types of therapy for depression, depressed patients were assigned to receive either cognitive therapy or behavior therapy for a 12-week period. The researchers attempted to ensure that the patients in the two groups had a similar severity of depressed symptoms by administering a standardized test of depression to each participant, then pairing them according to the severity of their symptoms.
To assess the difference in reading comprehension between 7 and 9-year-olds, a researcher recruited a group of each from a local primary school. They were given the same passage of text to read, and then asked a series of questions to assess their understanding.
To assess the effectiveness of two different ways of teaching reading, a group of 5-year-olds were recruited from a primary school. Their level of reading ability was assessed, and then they were taught using scheme one for 20 weeks. At the end of this period, their reading was reassessed, and a reading improvement score was calculated. They were then taught using scheme two for a further 20 weeks and another reading improvement score for this period was calculated. The reading improvement scores for each child were then compared.
In order to assess the effect of organization on recall, a researcher randomly assigned student volunteers to two conditions. Condition one attempted to recall a list of words that were organized into meaningful categories; condition two attempted to recall the same words, randomly grouped on the page.
Discussion 2 Conducting Research Activity
Pick one research topic and answer the following questions.
Research Topic #1: The relationship between audience members’ opinions of a movie and their mood.
Research Topic #2: The relationship between the amount of time couples spend together and their relationship satisfaction.
Research Topic #3: The relationship between self-esteem and test performance.
Research Topic #4: The relationship between time spent listening to Heavy/Speed Metal music and aggression.
Directions:
Design a correlational study to investigate the relationship between these two variables. What is your hypothesis? How will you operationally define and measure the two variables?
How will you obtain a random sample of participants?
Assume that your study produces a correlation of .56 between the two variables (between liking the movie and audience members’ happiness). What are at least three possible causal explanations for this relationship?
Now design an experimental study to investigate these variables. What is your hypothesis? What type of hypotheses does the experimental method allow you to test that the correlational method does not?
What is your independent variable? What is your dependent variable?
How will you make sure that the study has high internal validity? Will you use random assignment to conditions?
Do any ethical concerns about the treatment of participants emerge from your experimental design?
Discussion 3 Research Study Discussion
Much of today’s research in Psychology comes from colleges and universities. Research your college or a near-by state institution and identify one current study that is under way. Provide a brief overview of the research and whether or not the findings of that research would be of value to you someday.
Discussion 4 Personality Disorder Activity
The traits associated with personality disorders are often prototypes of characters in book, movies, and television. Pick three characters from a book, a movie, TV show or a video game with personality disorders. For each, complete the following:
Describe the character, the situation and the disorder.
Describe the traits of that disorder.
Identify the traits of what the character does or says that indicates the disorder
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.