{"id":131601,"date":"2018-02-20T23:50:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T23:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writemyessayfree.com\/multi-stage-research"},"modified":"2017-08-16T06:57:10","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T06:57:10","slug":"multi-stage-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/multi-stage-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Multi stage research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PSY2174: RESEARCH METHODS AND ETHICS ASSIGNMENT 3: MULTI-STAGE RESEARCH PROJECT BACKGROUND In the previous assignments, you have prepared a screener and a questionnaire. A screener is used to select participants for research and to recruit them; the questionnaire is a tool used to collect data from the participants. In the present assignment, you must move \u201cup\u201d one level to broaden your vision. Instead of simply focusing on one aspect of one stage of a research project, you must take a more strategic view and create a plan for a multi-stage research project. Do not wait until the last minute to start this project! You should begin working on it seriously no later than week 3. THE ASSIGNMENT In assignment 3, you are a researcher applying for a grant for a particular topic of research (for example). To compete successfully for the grant, you must accomplish two main goals: \u2022 as the ultimate goal, you must describe the overall objective of your research project; and \u2022 you must demonstrate that you are able to identify intermediate goals (stages) that must be completed to enable you to reach the ultimate goal. THE RESEARCH QUESTION For the purposes of this exercise, you may choose any research question in Psychology as long as it is valid for a multi-stage study. As you consider how to do this, you might use the following roadmap: \u2022 identify the ultimate (broad) goal; \u2022 identify things that you need to know to get to the ultimate goal \u2013 in other words, identify where there are areas of uncertainty between your current state of knowledge and the ultimate goal; \u2022 determine how you would address each of these intermediate uncertainties, each of which is a goal in itself. Your multi-stage project should consist of 3 stages which flow logically to the ultimate goal. SAMPLING PLAN You will need a sampling plan that consists of one paragraph. In the sampling plan, you must specify the characteristics of the population from which you want to sample. You may choose any population you wish except for the groups listed below. That is, you may not sample exclusively: \u2022 college or university students; or \u2022 people from your home town and\/or Ottawa. For ethical reasons, you may not propose to sample anyone under the age of 18 or anyone not legally able to give consent. To keep your project manageable, it is strongly recommended that you not sample clinical populations. To be clear, your sample may include people of your age (for example) as part of a sampling plan that includes people aged 18-24, 25-34, and so on; however, you may not sample people of your own age exclusively. DEVELOPING THE MULTI-STAGE RESEARCH PLAN There are two aspects to developing the multi-stage research plan, described below. WHAT YOU MUST DO There are several tasks you must complete. Your mark will be based on how well you perform these tasks. \u2022 You must come up with the idea for a research project. That is, what overall topic do you want to research? (A great way to do this is to work collaboratively with other students or friends. In the real world, very little research springs from one individual\u2019s head.) \u2022 You must describe your overall research question clearly. Make it clear to the reader (that is, to the granting agency) why you deserve money to conduct this research. The funder does not have to be NSERC, CIHR, or SSHRC; it could be a private-sector client or some other group. \u2022 When you specify the overall research question, you must also specify what the sampling plan is. That is, are you doing research on the general population or on some subset of it? Characterise your sample, and make it clear why the sample is appropriate for your study. In the overall sampling plan, you do not need to specify numbers, but you do need to specify sample sizes for each stage. \u2022 Next, you must identify the stages (steps) required to address your overall goal. This is a key aspect of this project, and may present the greatest challenge to you; once again, I encourage you to work on this part collaboratively, also. In identifying intermediate goals, keep in mind that it is often helpful to increase uncertainty before narrowing your focus. \u2022 For each stage, you must identify and defend (briefly) the research technique (method) you will use for that stage, the number of participants you will use, and where you will find them. You must use a different research method (and sample) for each stage, although the samples may be drawn from the same population. Finally, you should also estimate the total amount of time that each stage will require, including development of the research instrument, recruiting, collecting data, analysing data, and reporting; you should estimate in weeks, not days. Don\u2019t worry too much about accuracy of your time estimate; the reason for estimating time is to get you in the mode of \u201cseeing\u201d the scope of the project. WHAT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO You do not have to: \u2022 Develop a screener; \u2022 Develop a questionnaire; \u2022 Conduct the research (indeed, because we have not applied for ethical approval, you must not conduct research). SAMPLE PROJECTS Below, you will findtwo examples of a multi-stage project, the purpose of which is to give you an idea of how you might proceed. The formatting used here is not appropriate for your project, because you will need more detail (sample sizes, etc.). Example 1: The Liberal Party Overall goal: Working for the Liberal Party, your goal is to identify ways for the Liberal Party to mount a more effective political campaign in the next federal election. Stage 1: Characterise the feelings of the electorate about the Liberal Party today. To do this, conduct a large-scale telephone survey (2000 voters) across Canada. The results of Stage 1 will feed into an internal brainstorming session designed to propose new tactics for the Liberal Party. (The brainstorming sessions, not described here, are not one of your 3 stages.) A comment on this stage: in public policy studies, it may make sense (as I\u2019ve suggested here) to start with a large-scale telephone study; however, in Psychology this is probably not a good method for stage 1. Stage 2: Working with the new tactics developed in the brainstorming sessions, get public feedback on a small number of concepts that describe new approaches the Liberal Party could take. These concepts will be presented to voters in a series of focus groups, where the positive and negative aspects of each concept can be discussed. The objective of this Stage 2 is to identify, from these concepts, aspects that could be used to create one \u201cbest\u201d strategy. (The actual creation of the \u201cbest\u201d strategy is not one of your stages.) Stage 3: Once internal meetings have taken the results of Stage 2 and created a single \u201cbest\u201d strategy for the Liberal Party, this new strategy will be presented to voters by Liberal candidates. Researchers will obtain contact information from some of the voters and conduct depth interviews with them either immediately afterwards or two weeks later to obtain their assessment of the appeal of the new approach. Example 2: Toothpaste use Overall goal: Characterise the factors that determine how much toothpaste people use Stage 1: Conduct a survey to estimate how much toothpaste people put on the brushes of their toothbrush, expressed as a percentage of the length of the bristle pad. For this stage, you meet with the respondents face-to-face and ask them to show you how much toothpaste they use. Stage 2: Conduct a series of focus groups in which respondents discuss, among other things, the factors that influence how much toothpaste they put on their toothbrushes. Discussion topics could include taste, cost, fear of bad breath, hygiene, and other factors. Stage 3: Using specially created toothbrush models that have different lengths of bristle pads, you conduct an experiment to see if the amount of toothpaste used by participants varies as a function of the length of the bristle pad. For example, if a participant uses 1.0 cm of toothpaste on a bristle pad that is 1.5 cm long, will they use 2.0 cm on a bristle pad that is 3 cm long? MARKING Collaborate with friends, classmates, and others in preparing this project. However, each student must hand in his or her own work, which must not be the same as another student\u2019s. The document you hand in must be 2000-2500 words long, and generally conform to APA style (title, running head, etc., as described in the text). In terms of organisation of the document: \u2022 You should have an introductory section (page 1) that provides an overview of the three stages, provides the rationale of the study, and describes the overall sampling plan; \u2022 Stages 1, 2, and 3 should each be allocated their own sections (roughly 1 page each). In each section, you\u2019ll describe the objective, method (procedure, sample and sample size), and expected outcome (in broad terms, not specifics).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PSY2174: RESEARCH METHODS AND ETHICS ASSIGNMENT 3: MULTI-STAGE RESEARCH PROJECT BACKGROUND In the previous assignments, you have prepared a screener and a questionnaire. A screener is used to select participants for research and to recruit them; the questionnaire is a Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}