PSYC220-Experimental Psychology Prof. Murphy STEP 2-Research Methods - In order to give you experience in writing an APA style methods section I would like you to follow the format described below, which is also explained in the APA publication manual. This is just an example, it is not the beginning of what you should write as the lab is very different from my example. Start at the top of the page, type Method in the center and then start a new line (double space). On the second line type Participants and put it in italics. Start describing your participants in paragraph form on the third line, so... Lab 4-Comparing Groups The purpose of this lab is to introduce you to the process of data analysis, interpretation and discussion of results when conducting research where you are comparing groups and your dependent variable is either interval or ratio data. The first part of this assignment is to take the Empathy Assessment (or give it to someone else if you prefer); the link to the assessment is below. Then report the score and the gender and age of the individual who took it (send it to your instructor in an email). Empathy Scale Link https://psychology-tools.com/test/empathy-quotient Part One - For this study we are going to look at is the relationship between gender and empathy (as measured using the empathy quotient above). We are looking at a group difference here but since we cannot manipulate the IV of gender we cannot talk about cause and effect, just relationships. STEP 1 - Write out your experimental and null hypotheses Experimental Hypothesis: Null Hypothesis: Participants One hundred 6th graders were... Method You will follow the same basic format for the procedures and materials sections as well. Materials The Rosenberg scale requires subjects to respond to... Procedures Describe the procedures used to collect the data. STEP 3 Results - Analyze the data and then report your results (HINT: you can do a t- test or an ANOVA). Your results section should also be written in APA format. When you have completed the methods section simply go to the next line and center the word "Results". Then start writing in the line below that in paragraph form. So for example... Results There was a significant difference between the mean self-esteem scores of those who received the empowerment training (x = 74.5, S.D. = 3.64) and those who did not (x = 52.6, S.D. = 4.25), F= 14.2, p < .01. This suggests that the empowerment training was successful in increasing the subjects' feelings of self-worth. == Please note that both "F" and "p" have been italicized. It is important that you present both the numerical result and an interpretation that allows the reader to understand the meaning of the statistical test. When you are comparing groups it is also important to include the descriptive information. This can be accomplished by incorporating that information into your results statement as I did above. However, if there are too many groups to do that comfortably you can include an APA style table of the descriptive results. Note there are no vertical lines in the table. Table 1 Mean self-esteem scores as a function of empowerment group Self-esteem Score Empowerment Group Treatment 74.5 (3.64) 52.5 (4.25) Note: numbers in parentheses are standard deviations. Normally the results section would be followed by a discussion section where you talk about your research in terms of how it relates to the previous literature that you would have discussed in your introduction. For our purposes just indicate your conclusion in a sentence or two. I would also like you to critique your study: possible problems and what could have been done better. See example below. Discussion As anticipated, subjects who received the empowerment training scored significantly higher on the self-esteem test than did the subjects in the control group. Despite these results there were several problems with the study. Subjects in the control condition complained of being bored; it is possible that this fact caused them to feel temporarily less satisfied with themselves. In the future I would suggest having a comparable presentation in the control condition that does not preach empowerment.