Purpose: The focus of this course has been on learning both the "what" and the "how" of studying the intersections of psychology and Christianity. By creating your own research proposal on a topic of your choosing in this area, you will put what you have been learning into the practice of generating legitimate psychological inquiry.

Compose a presentation of an "experimental theology" research proposal: a study to examine some aspect of Christian belief. Your chosen aspect of Christian belief can be anything, as long as it is a characteristic of Christianity. It does not exclusively have to be so (i.e., it can be an element of belief that other faiths share, such as God or prayer), but it does have to clearly be so. A partial list of topics to get you started is included below.

God	temptation	sin	love	hate
grace	repentance	evil	miracles	prayer
heaven	hell	race	gender	angels
Satan	death	Holy Spirit	Jesus Christ	the Bible
	the soul	the body	the end of the world

Remember to approach the question from a psychological perspective - that is, it should explore the connection between your chosen element of spirituality and some aspect(s) of human thought, feeling, and/or behavior. Remember also that this is an experimental theology proposal - that is, you should propose an experiment https://www.simplypsychology.org/experimental-method.html for a refresher and helpful additional links on the experimental method). Go beyond only survey and self-report measures (valid and insightful though they can be) and propose authentic, innovative, reliable, and/or behavioral methods and/or measures. Think about how to link together what you've learned this term with what your own faith experiences, both individual and communal, have taught you about yourself, about belief, and about God. Feel free to use any scale or method we discussed this term in a prior reading (provided it is conceptually appropriate and correctly cited and discussed).

Your research proposal Screencast should include:

• Title slide with original title, name, affiliation (Abilene Christian University)
• Introduction: orient the audience to your main topics.
  • What are we going to be talking about today?
  • What place does it have in Christianity?
  • What does the Bible say about it?
• Literature review: at least 5 related articles cited
  • Group by theme
  • Key points on slides: stay focused, use minimal text
  • Use in-text citation format (last name, year)
• Research question clearly stated
• Research proposal
  • How would you answer your research question?
  • What is your overall study design?
  • What is your hypothesis?
  • What are the key independent and dependent variables?
  • Who would your participants be?
• Conclusion: address limitations and implications.
  • What considerations do you know might be missing from your planned design?
  • What populations might your findings not represent, given your design and planned participants?
  • What could we learn about psychology and Christianity from this study?
  • How could this study benefit us in the academy, in church, in the world?
• References slide
• Overall design: visually appealing, appropriate use of graphics, animation, video.