Thesis Writing 2

Pilot Study

• Refers to mini or small versions of a full-scale study

• Regarded as a preliminary study intended to test study procedures

• Also known as a feasibility study

• Involves the pre-testing of the research instrument such as survey, test, interview

• A trial run of the entire study from the start to finish that increases the likelihood of success for the main study

• A dry run of your study procedures

Publication Bias

• Tendency of journals and publishing bodies to select only the researches that have subjective favorable results or findings

• May lead to overestimation and underrepresentation of real outcomes

Adopted Instruments

• Reliability and validity research studies conducted on those instruments can be used to the current study

• Links current study to all other studies that used the same instruments

• Saves times in making significant changes

• Simple and requires little effort

• May require a few modifications if necessary

Adapted Instruments

• Describes the instruments sufficiently in the Instruments section

• Who developed the instrument

• Who validated the instrument

• Other studies that have used the instrument

• Population by which instruments were created is different with your intended research informants

• Manifestation of the variable may be different from the group it was created and for the informants

• Requires more substantial changes

• Follows the general design of another instrument but adds items, removes items, and/or substantially changes the content of each item

• Almost similar to creating a new instrument

1. Introduction

2. Informed Consent

3. Participant’s Agreement

4. Robot foto/Demographic Sheet

5. Overall Instrument Reminders

6. Actual Instruments

7. Debriefing

Organizing your Google Survey

Hippocratic Oath

First of all, do no harm

Ethics

• Norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior 

• A discipline that studies the goodness or badness of human activities 

• The science of human duty

• Rules of practice in respect to a single class of human action

Ethical Principles

• A general set of guidelines that serve as inspiration for people as they carry out their work in research and practice in the different areas (e.g., industrial, educational, clinical, etc.)

Ethical Standards

• Seen as an expectation for people

• Rules that apply to any kind of endeavor and may be observed to be specific to certain areas or disciplines

• Promote ethical governance (order) – E.g. Medicine, Law, Psychology, Dentistry, Business, etc.

Mandatory Ethics

Where individuals focus on compliance with the law and the dictates of applicable established codes of ethics; Compliance is governed by written rules enacted by bodies

Aspirational Ethics

Sophisticated level wherein people become more reflective of the impacts of their actions to others; Compliance is governed by the unwritten rules of life

Ethical Dilemma

• Any circumstance that confuses the researcher because

• There are competing or conflicting beliefs in the situations at hand

• Situations are seen to become beneficial, albeit one’s failure to subscribe to ethics

• Certain events appear unclear and complex

Legal Standards

_____________ of practice are different from ethical standards. Generally, __________ are related to accepted professional practices in the community, while ethical standards tend to be idealistic

1. Beneficence and Nonmaleficence

2. Fidelity and Responsibility

3. Integrity

4. Justice

5. Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity

Five General Ethical Principles

Beneficence and Nonmaleficence

• Researchers should strive to protect the rights and welfare of those with whom they work professionally, both with human and animal subjects they handle in the studies

• Entails the elimination of biases, affiliations, and prejudices

Fidelity and Responsibility

• Suggests that researchers have a moral responsibility to help ensure that others working in the field also uphold high ethical standards 

• Includes calling attention of others practicing unethical behaviors and teaching others ethical standards

Integrity

• Researchers should never attempt to deceive or misrepresent

• In studies, deception can involve fabricating or manipulating results in some way to achieve desired outcomes

• Researchers should also strive for transparency and honesty in their practice

Justice

• Relates to a responsibility to be fair and impartial

• States that people have a right to access and benefit from advances that have been made in the field of experimental psychology/research

• It is important for researchers to treat people equally

Respect for People’s Rights and Dignity

• Entails considering the right to privacy and confidentiality among the participants

• Considers minimizing biases and having awareness of diversity issues concerning populations

1. Informed Consent

2. Deception

3. Coercion

4. Anonymity

5. Risks

6. Debriefing

APA Guidelines for Human Researchers

Informed Consent

• Participants must know they are involved in research and give their consent or permission 

• The subjects’ participation must be strictly voluntary.

Informed Consent to Experiments

• Not only is informed consent required, but full disclosure as well. 

• All facts that may potentially influence the participant’s willingness to participate in the research must be told to them beforehand so that they can give INFORMED consent

Informed Consent for Recording Paraphernalia

• If participants are recorded and there is any chance they could be identified, then extra consent needs to be given. 

• Additionally, if you wanted to use people’s pictures as stimuli in a study, maybe a study taking the same people and getting pictures w/ and w/o glasses, you would need a special form of consent for the people in the pictures.

Deception

• The act of making someone believe something that is not true, usually in order to gain some advantage for yourself

• It must be avoided, but may be allowed under some circumstances.

• Must not be so extreme as to invalidate the informed consent

Confederate

Person/s who is/are usually tapped to perform a secret task in studies, usually related to valid applications of deception in certain studies

Coercion

• Subjects cannot be forced in any way to give consent to the study. 

• Subjects must be free to withdraw from the study at any time they wish to do so and this must be respected by the researchers

Anonymity

• The identities and actions of any participant must not be revealed by the researcher. 

• Subjects’ right to privacy should never be violated.

• There shall be respect for confidentiality about the subjects.

Risk

• Subjects cannot be placed at significant mental or physical risk.

• Subjects should not be exposed to harmful or dangerous research procedures.

• Procedures must be carefully interpreted and reviewed.

Debriefing

• Participants must be told about the purpose of the study and provided with ways to contact the researchers about the results of the study

• __________ is used to remove any misconceptions that deception may have created, or any misconceptions that may have arisen. 

• If researchers become aware that harm has occurred, then they must do everything they can to alleviate that harm.

1. Purpose

2. Care

3. Acquisition

4. Suffering

5. Supervision

APA Guidelines for Animal Studies

Purpose

Animals are chosen because they are best-suited to answer the question at hand.

Care

Researchers must show concern toward the animal subjects in all aspects of functioning. Considers the needs of the animal subjects.

Acquisition

Animal subjects must be obtained legally and from accredited companies or organizations

Suffering

Research procedures must be designed to induce the least amount of __________ possible and feasible to the experiment

Supervision

Trained officers and authorities should, at all times, manage the conduct of studies done with animal subjects

1. The Little Albert

2. The Monster Study

3. The Milgram Experiment

4. The Bystander Effect

5. The Stanford Prison Experiment

6. The Case of David Reimer

Popular Unethical Psychological Research

Plagiarism

The act of presenting another’s work or ideas as your own. Comes from the Latin word, plagiarus

1. Intentional

2. Unintentional

Classes of Plagiarism

1. Plagiarism of Words

2. Plagiarism of Structure

3. Plagiarism of Ideas

4. Plagiarism of Authorship

5. Plagiarism of Self

Types of Plagiarism

Plagiarism of Words

The use of another’s exact words without citing the author

Plagiarism of Structure

Paraphrasing another’s words by changing sentence construction or word choice with citation. Paraphrasing while maintaining original sentence construction, acknowledging the source.

Plagiarism of Ideas

Presenting another’s ideas as your own without giving the person credit. Submitting a paper without citing or incorrectly citing another’s ideas.

Plagiarism of Authorship

Turning in a replication of another’s work. Submitting a paper that you got off the internet, from a friend or any corpora for that matter and presenting it as your own

Plagiarism of Self

The use of previous work for a separate assignment. Although these were your original words and thoughts, receiving credit for a previous assignment is considered cheating because no knowledge is actually being advanced.

Ethics Board

Reviews research proposals involving human subjects and their data to ensure that they agree with local and international ethical guidelines.

1. Instrumentation

2. Process

3. Resources

4. Management

Critical Research Components

Instrumentation

Appropriateness of all data collection tools to be employed in the study, including the robotfoto, standardized tests, questionnaires, and the aide memoire

Process

Key steps that must be satisfied in the data collection including all considerations related to the ethical considerations

• Maximum Variation Sampling

• Homogenous Sampling

• Typical Case Sampling

• Extreme Case Sampling

• Critical Case Sampling

• Total Population Sampling

• Expert Sampling

Types of Purposive Sampling

Resources

Concerns related to the time needed to fulfill the demands of the entire study. Encompass other logistical or administrative necessities arising from the study

Management

Pertains to the data management and other required services that may be entailed to successfully conduct the study 

1. Sourcing of Participants

2. Determination of Participants

3. Acceptability of Instruments

4. Procedural Considerations

5. Stimulation of Data Analysis

Pilot Work Realizations

1. Evidence Gap

2. Knowledge Gap

3. Practical-Knowledge Gap

4. Methodological Gap

5. Empirical Gap

6. Theoretical Gap

7. Population Gap

Types of Research Gap

Speciesism

The belief that if humans are benefited, then it is justified to harm an animal

64 Participants for one-tailed and 82 Participants for two-tailed

Minimum Sample Size for Correlational

51 Participants per group for one-tailed and 64 Participants for two-tailed

Minimum Sample Size for Causal Comparative

21 Participants per group for one-tailed hypotheses

Minimum Sample Size for Experimental

3-5 Participants

Minimum Sample Size for Case Study

<10 Interviews

Minimum Sample Size for Phenomenological

15-20 or 20-30 Participants

Minimum Sample Size for Grounded Theory

1 Cultural group or 30-50 Interviews

Minimum Sample Size for Ethnography

100-200 Units of observation

Minimum Sample Size for Ethological

1. Technicality-Based Notes

2. Content-Based Improvements

3. Procedural-Based Comments

4. Question-Based Remarks

5. Preferential-Based Recommendations

6. Overall Inputs for Improvement

General Clusters of Observations

Technicality-Based Notes

• Formatting issues of the proposal

• Thesis Paper appeared distorted

• Lapses in grammar leading to poor sentence constructions and idea articulation

• Consider the hiring of English Language Editor (optional though)

• Use of terms that are not commonly known by everyone

• Lengthening of certain content areas

• Trimming of specified portions

• Relocation of specific parts

• Incomplete manuscript/s

• No appendix section, lacking expected part

Content-Based Improvement

• Improving the argumentation

• Lack of reference to issues, trends, blindspots, and/or blankspots

• Checking the accuracy of supporting anchors of the study

• Making appropriate referencing to the reconnaissance materials consulted

• Changing the study direction

• Fine-tuning the problem statements to align with the overall study direction

• Removal of certain theories

• Adding of recommended reconnaissance materials

• Clarifications on the inclusion/exclusion criteria set for the study

Argument

Statements, grounded on reality, that are for or against something supported by evidence

• Claim

• Evidence

• Counterclaim

• Refutations

• Conclusions

Elements of an Argument

Procedural-Based Comments

• Too broad data gathering procedures

• Specifying the stages to be undergone

• Ethical considerations not matching the data gathering procedures described

• Sequencing of procedures and realistic perspective of the procedures

• Number of days, manner of deployment

• Specific manner by which data will be analyzed

• Software issues and concerns

• Identification of correct statistical tools

• Expanding the mode of analysis

• Descriptive Phenomenology vs Interpretative Phenomenology

Privacy

Practicing the individual’s right to control access to their participation in a study ; control of other’s access to information about you

Confidentiality

Protecting the participant’s personally identifiable data ; only the research investigators know identity of participants

Anonymity

Protected when the researchers refrain from collecting any personal identifiers, direct or indirect, that would link responses to a specific individual ; identity of participants not known to researcher(s)

Question-Based Remarks

• Do not need specific responses from student-researchers

• Meant only for tinkering the thoughts an stirring another perspective

• Send signal that specific portion was interpreted differently for consideration by the researchers

Preferential-Based Recommendations

• Study suggestions that are particular to your study that cannot be found in others

• May or may not be implemented

• Can serve as recommendations for future related studies

1. Purpose and Objective

2. Reason for Selection

3. Voluntariness

4. Expected Location and Duration

5. Procedures

6. Privacy and Confidentiality

7. Contact Information

8. Refusal to Participate Penalty

9. Risks

10. Benefits

Components of Informed Consent Based from FALREC