Instructions for the Research Report (Assessment 3)
This assessment is a research report investigating the correlation between subjective wellbeing (SWB) and personality. Your task is to write an APA (7th ed.) style research report. Information for writing research reports has been provided in Topic 1 (Preparation and Orientation) and in the APA Style and Writing Guide (a link to this resource is on Interact 2). There will also be two online meetings, one on writing research reports and another on this assessment topic. These resources and instructions will help you to understand the requirements of this assessment. We recommend that you familiarise yourself with the requirements of research report writing before reading these instructions.
Psychology Research Report (SWB) Assignment-Australia.
The data for this research report was collected from paper surveys distributed to retirees from various local community groups in the townships of Wagga Wagga and Bathurst NSW, Australia. Demographic information was collected on the participant’s age, sex, education and
marital status. Participants were given a questionnaire and a self-addressed envelope to return the survey upon completion. All questionnaires were anonymous, and participants provided informed consent by returning the survey. The sample (N = 30) consisted of 15 males and 15 females ranging in age from 55 to 76 years. The Charles Sturt University Human Research Ethics Committee granted ethics approval. While you are not required to actually collect the data for this research project (and therefore you do not need to seek ethics approval), you should be aware of the ethical procedures that any psychological research project should undertake (please see Lilienfeld, 2018, Chapter 2, Section 2.3).
Step-by-step guide to completing this assessment
Below is a step-by-step guide to complete this assessment. You also have additional resources including the APA Writing Guide that has information on writing reports, some helpful tips and a deconstructed report
1.You are provided with information and data to complete this assessment. Therefore, the first step is to familiarise yourself with the topic. The background information section below provides an initial overview of the topic and some references to get you started in your reading. This information will help you to write the introduction section of the report.
2.Your Introduction should include your aims and hypotheses. Your aim describes the overall purpose of the study and appears before the hypotheses. Your hypotheses are single sentence statements that outline the predictions that you think the findings of your investigation would be. For this report, the hypotheses will predict a relationship (positive or negative) between SWB and personality. You will examine three hypotheses; the first
two are:
- It is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between SWB and extra version
- It is hypothesised that there is a negative correlation between SWB and neuroticism
In addition, you will select ONE hypothesis from the three below:
- It is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between SWB and conscientiousness
- It is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between SWB and agreeableness
- It is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between SWB and openness to experience.
3.Once you have written the introduction, start the Method section. In the Participants sub-section, describe your participants including the mean and standard deviation for their age and frequencies for the other demographic variables. You will need to calculate the mean and standard deviation for age by hand using a calculator (not a computer). The working sheets showing your calculations must be provided as a separate file to the report. These can be submitted as scanned pdf files or pictures of your calculations embedded in a word document (there are no specific formatting requirements). You are not permitted to use any statistical package for the data analysis. It is important to do this calculation by hand, to enhance your understanding.
4.To assist in the calculations, please refer the Weiten (2017) reading from Topic 2 and you will also be shown how to calculate these in the online meeting. Frequency data for marital status and education is below and the table at the end of this document has all the participant data.
5.Next in the Materials subsection describe the scales that were used (details of the scales are below). In the Procedure subsection, explain how the study was administered (details are above).
6.Report your statistics in the Results section. Use Table 1 for reporting the means and standard deviations for SWB and the three personality traits. These means and standard deviations are provided to you: SWB (M = 15.67, SD = 6.43, range = 2-23), Extra version (M= 5.13, SD = 1.17, range 2.5-7.0), Neuroticism (M = 3.4, SD = 1.91, range 1.0-7.0), Conscientiousness, (M = 5.62, SD = 1.27, range 3.5-7.0), Agreeableness (M = 5.33, SD = 1.25,range 3.0-7.0), Openness to Experience (M = 5.42, SD = 1.29, range 2.5-7.0). Ensure you
comment on what the values signify first and do not merely repeat in text what appears in the table.
7.Table 2 is for your correlations. The correlations and respective p-values are provided below.
- SWB and Extra version, r = .688, p < .0001.
- SWB and Neuroticism, r = -.746, p < .0001.
- SWB and Conscientiousness, r =.720, p < .0001.
- SWB and Agreeableness, r =.732, p < .0001.
- SWB and Openness to Experience, r = .522, p < .0001.
8.Again, introduce the table first. Here you would report on the direction (is it a positive or negative relationship?), and magnitude (is the correlation strong, moderate, or weak, see the box below) of the relationship. As this is your assessment and not a journal manuscript, do NOT include your tables as an appendix; rather, tables should be in the Results section directly below where they are introduced. Note that both tables must be formatted to APA guidelines, the tables above are not examples of how to format an APA table.
9.You may wish to calculate the shared variance between the variables; the Topic 2 tutorial explains how to do this.
Correlations identify the magnitude, direction and statistical significance of the relationship between two variables. The following conventions, based on Sattler’s (2008) recommendations will assist you in describing the strength of the association: <.30 small/weak, .31 –49 medium/moderate, >.50 large/strong.
10.Report the significance of the correlation (p-value); there is additional information on statistical significance below. If you have difficulty interpreting the significance level, please refer to Lilienfeld (2018), Chapter 2, Section 2.4. Statistical significance is also covered in Topic 2, and we will discuss it during the online meeting.
11.You then relate these findings back to your hypotheses and specify whether your hypotheses were supported or not.
Psychology Research Report (SWB) Assignment-Australia.
12.Next, your discussion section should include whether your hypotheses were supported, where your results sit within the wider literature (that you would have reviewed in the introduction) and what the findings mean in a practical sense. A paragraph on the limitations and future directions is also appropriate, ending with a conclusion.
13.Finally, include a copy of each questionnaire as an appendix. Each appendix (there should be three, the SWB scale, TIPI and demographics, should start on a new page, identified using capital letters (i.e., Appendix A), with a brief descriptive title.
14.Submit your hand calculations as a separate file, do not append these to the report.
Some Background to the Research
Considerable research has shown that there are differing links between SWB and the Big Five personality traits of extra version, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. For example, research has shown that SWB is positively correlated with extra version, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, and negatively correlated with neuroticism (Zhai, et al., 2013) whereas others have found no such association for openness to experience and agreeableness (Tank sale, 2015).
However, both SWB and personality have been defined and measured in various ways, so it is important to examine whether this relationship is consistent across differing measurements and the various samples of participants used (see Lucas, 2018; Meléndez et al., 2019; Tank sale, 2015;
Zhai et al., 2013 for examples). Few researchers have considered retirees and fewer still in an Australian context. Extending research into other populations helps to establish whether there is a universal connection between SWB and personality. Such a connection would allow for examining ways in which personality could be utilised to enhance SWB and thus allow for creating interventions designed to improve well-being (an important consideration when discussing your findings).
Psychology Research Report (SWB) Assignment-Australia.
You may wish to consult the references used in this background or the additional references below to get you started in your reading. You should also read further and when researching the topic, do not use web pages, blogs or other low-quality sources. All sources should be cited in-text and in the reference list (any time an idea is cited that is not your own, you must
credit the author/s). Only works cited in the body of the report should be in the reference list (not everything you read to comprehend the topic).
Some additional information
Internal Consistency Reliability
Internal consistency reliability refers to how consistently a scale measures the construct it purports to measure. In most studies, Cron bach’s alpha is used to assess this reliability and reported when describing the scale. This statistic provides important information on the scales psychometric properties. While not mandatory, you may wish to include internal consistency reliability in your Methods section, and Pont in et al. (2013, p. 8) provides a good example of how to do this. Use the following conventions to interpret previously reported Cron bach alphas: < .59 = very low, .60 to .69 low, .70 to moderate, .80 to .89 moderately high, and > .90 high (Murphy &
David shofer, 2001).
Statistical Significance
In research, data is drawn from a sample of the population and therefore only approximates that population. We aim to draw a conclusion about the population based on our sample. That is, we want to make generalisations from our sample to the population.
A correlation, by virtue of the mathematics used, must lie between -1 and +1. Supposing we obtain a correlation of .5 from our sample, how do we know this is a true correlation of the population? Our correlation could simply be a chance result as there is always some degree of inaccuracy in sampling; the true relationship could be zero. Alternatively, our .5 may indeed be a true relationship that occurs in the population. The question is how do we know? Statistical significance helps us to know.
Psychology Research Report (SWB) Assignment-Australia.
Statistical significance relates to the probability (p) that the obtained correlation deviates from zero simply by chance. This p-value (always between 0 and 1) relates to the sample size (the greater the sample size, the less the error). If we set statistical significance at .05 (a common and
arbitrary level) and our obtained correlation is significant at this level (i.e., ≤ .05), this tells us that the chance of getting a correlation this high is 5 in 100. Because this is very low, we can conclude that this result likely occurs in the population. We may be wrong, but our chance of being wrong is
5%, written as p < .05 or in other words, in more than 95% of times you will likely find a relationship between those two variables.
Psychology Research Report (SWB) Assignment-Australia.
Note. For this report, if you cannot decide on statistical significance, you can still pass the assignment, but reporting statistical significance adds precision to your results. In later psychology subjects, it will be essential to understand and report on the significance, and you will need to do so when relevant.
Turnitin
You must submit a Turnitin similarity percentage and an academic integrity declaration with your report. These must appear on the title page and the research report template on the APA Style and Writing Guide shows how the title page should be formatted. If you are not familiar with Turnitin, there is additional information on Interact 2 (see Turnitin in the left-hand menu).
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