Research Proposal Assignment | Essay Help Services

Research Methods in Psychology 1
Peer (P)review
Peer (P)review Guidelines
Engaging in scientific research means engaging with one’s peers at a number
of different levels. Two especially important interactions are with the Institutional
Review Board (IRB), whose job it is to evaluate the ethical implications of proposed
research and ensure the protection and wellbeing of research participants, and peer
reviewers, who are responsible for ensuring that published research meets certain
standards of scientific quality. You are taking on both of these roles today, and will
be evaluating these qualities for your fellow students’ proposed research.
You will be reading and providing feedback for multiple proposals. For each
proposal, please have a separate sheet of paper (or word document) with your
name, as editor, and the name of the student author on top.
You should use the following guidelines as a way of structuring your
feedback and notes. In other words, you should not simply go through and answer
“yes/no” for each question, but provide feedback to the author that addresses these
major questions, including any recommended changes to the proposed study.
Please use the numbering here to structure your feedback.
Reviewing a Manuscript (Adapted from Robert B. Cialdini)
A. Read the manuscript over initially in a non-evaluative mode to get an idea of
the author’s general purpose. Determine what question or issue the author is
addressing and what s/he would like to say about it.
B. Begin rereading, but this time more skeptically.
Questions to ask and things to look for in the Introduction (Parts 1 & 2)
R1. Is it clear what the author’s purpose is? That is, do you understand what
question is being asked or what issue is being raised?
R2. Is this question or issue important/interesting enough to warrant space in a
professional journal?
a. Does the author make it clear what the relevance and importance of
this question are? A case should be made for what answering this
question will accomplish, in terms of advancing psychological
understanding.
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R3. Does the author do an appropriate job of discussing previous work that is
pertinent?
a. Is it clear what other researchers have done, and how it relates to the
author’s question? If the literature review is vague or unclear, either
in terms of what the findings were or how they relate to the current
question, it will be more difficult to evaluate the current hypothesis.
b. Determine whether the author is accurately representing the state of
the data. Does the prior literature really say what the author is
claiming it says? Look to any such discrepancies as indications of
problems. That is, if the author is omitting or distorting some earlier
results, this may be a tip-off for some embarrassing or difficult-toexplain
aspect of his/her research. (You won’t have the original
articles to thoroughly check this, but the article reviews should all be
internally consistent–the author shouldn’t be contradicting
themselves.)
Questions to ask and things to look for in the Hypothesis section (Part 2)
R4. Do the experimental hypotheses follow from what the author has said in the
Introduction? The hypothesis should directly relate to the issue raised in the
introduction, and make a testable prediction regarding it.
a. Often an author will present a theoretical formulation in the
Introduction and then attempt to test it with hypotheses that do not
derive logically from it. It is possible that the author did not think
through the implications of the theory and mistakenly expected
certain effects to occur that the theory does not logically predict. Make
sure that they are able to provide a coherent argument for their
hypothesis.
R5. Does the author come up with hypotheses on issues not dealt with in the
Introduction? Sometimes an author will present several hypotheses, only a
percentage of which has its basis in anything the author has said previously
in the paper. Usually, this is the case with more minor hypotheses, but even
then, it is unacceptable procedure. The reader should be informed of the
reasoning behind each prediction, and this reasoning should be clearly
supported by the evidence discussed in the introduction.
Questions to ask and things to look for in the Method (Part 3)
R6. In the Design section, does the author clearly state what kind of study this is,
and what their main variables are? Considering the type of hypothesis that
is being proposed (i.e., frequency, associative, or causal), is this type of study
appropriate to test that hypothesis?
Research Methods in Psychology 3
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a. In general, it’s preferable to conduct an experimental study wherever
possible. Even if the claim being made in the hypothesis is just an
associative one, an associative claim naturally opens the door to
speculation about causation. An experimental study will allow the
author to end up making a much stronger claim overall. There may be
reasons, either practical or ethical, why this study couldn’t be
conducted experimentally, but you should think through whether it
would be possible.
R7. Does the design include the necessary comparison groups for the author to
adequately answer the experimental question? (Make sure they’re not falling
prey to the positive/positive fallacy.)
R8. In the Participants section, does the author tell us who the study participants
are? Information should be included that tells what the author’s target
population is, and how participants will be recruited to sample that
population.
a. Consider how the sampling method affects the external validity of
this study. Depending on the research question and hypothesis, the
author may not be as concerned with broad generalizations; however,
it is problematic if the sampling method is likely to lead to a biased or
overly restrictive sample. Are there any biases that are likely to be
present, based on how the sample is obtained?
R9. Does the manipulation of the independent (or quasi-independent) variable
represent a good operationalization of the concept discussed in the
Introduction section (i.e., how strong is its construct validity)? For example,
suppose that a study was concerned with determining the effect of a
communicator’s credibility on attitude change. Would a manipulation of the
number of years of education a given communicator had be a proper
operationalization of the concept of credibility?
a. One way to answer this question is to look to see if there is a
manipulation check. If no manipulation check exists, you should have
doubts as to whether the author has indeed examined the influence of
the factor. This is most important for non-obvious manipulations (if
you were manipulating the font size on a piece of paper that you gave
participants, you wouldn’t need a manipulation check since you knew
exactly how big the fonts were; manipulating something like
perceptions of personal attributes is much more difficult to do, and
may not have been successfully achieved).
b. Watch out for manipulation checks that don’t reflect the theoretical
concept at issue but, rather, the experimental procedures designed to
vary that concept. For instance, in the above example a manipulation
check question that asked the participants to indicate how many years
of education the communicator had would not answer the question of
whether the participants viewed the communicator as credible. Such a
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question would tell us whether participants in various groups were
influenced by the procedures differentially but not whether this
differential influence caused one group of participants to see the
communicator as more or less credible than did another group of
participants, This is essentially the difference between a manipulation
check and a procedures check. Success of the latter is necessary but
not sufficient for success of the former.
R10. Do the measures of the study seem appropriate indexes of the dependent
variables under examination (i.e., how’s their construct validity)? For
example, would a participant’s verbal response to a question asked by the
experimenter (“As a result of the communication, did you change your mind
at all concerning the issue?”) be an adequate index of attitude change? (For a
correlational study, you can just evaluate the construct validity of the other
variable under investigation.)
R11. Is there anything that is varied along with the independent variable by the
experimental manipulation? If so, start thinking about what it is that covaries
with the independent variable and how this may supply an alternative
explanation for the predicted or obtained findings (i.e., weaken the study’s
internal validity). For instance, manipulating the number of years of
education a communicator has had might not only affect subjects’
perceptions of the communicator’s credibility (i.e., expertise and
trustworthiness) but also perceptions of his/her intelligence. And it may be
this intelligence difference that accounts for any attitude change effect rather
than the credibility difference. How could the researcher take steps to
eliminate these confounding variables?
R12. Does the author take the proper precautions against the systematic influence
of artifacts like experimenter bias, demand characteristics, evaluation
apprehension, etc. If not, how likely are alternative explanations based on
these artifacts?
R13. Does the author have a clear and specific plan for data analysis? They should
explicitly state the conditions they plan to compare, and the relevant
statistical tests that will be conducted. Do they have a plan for any post-hoc
tests that may be necessary? If there are later analyses that are conducted on
the data not previously stated in this section, you should be more skeptical of
the findings for two reasons: first, it is unlikely that any identified patterns in
the data are theoretically relevant to the research question under
investigation; and second, these unplanned post-hoc tests are much more
likely to be statistical artifacts, created by fishing for statistically significant
values. If any unplanned comparisons are conducted, the author should
clearly explain why.
Research Methods in Psychology 5
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Ethical considerations
E1. Are the personhood and autonomy of prospective participants adequately
protected? Efforts should be made to ensure that participants are not
coerced into participation, and that they have enough information to make an
informed decision about their participation.
a. It may or may not be necessary to have participants read and
complete a consent form. Do you think written consent is required in
this case, and if so, does the consent form adequately explain the
potential risks of participation, as well as the potential benefits? Is the
voluntary nature of research participation clearly explained to
participants?
b. Are there any special properties of the target population that require
extra care? For instance, individuals with intellectual disability, lower
socioeconomic status, or younger age may have a reduced ability to
understand information as it is relayed to them or to make a fully
autonomous decision regarding participation. Have adequate
safeguards been put into place to protect these more vulnerable
populations?
E2.Has the author taken steps to promote the wellbeing of research participants
and to minimize any potential harm? Harms that may be considered include
physical, economic, or emotional, among others. If there is a likelihood that
participants may be harmed by their participation in the study, is there an
equal or greater benefit that they may accrue? Benefits, likewise, may be
physical, economic, or emotional, among others.
a. While the potential benefit to participants should be greater than the
potential harm, excessive benefit can be just as problematic as
deficient benefit. Participants may feel compelled to participate in the
study, thereby limiting their autonomy.
b. In addition to the beneficence towards individual participants,
similarly the risks and benefits towards society as a whole should be
considered. How likely is it that the results of this research will
improve society, including their contributions to shared scientific
knowledge, and how do these benefits weigh against any potential
societal harm that may be generated?
E3. Is there an effort to promote justice through this research?
a. The risks and benefits should be balanced among all participants. For
example, if participants in one experimental condition are exposed to
a greater degree of risk, is an attempt made to address this?
b. These risks and benefits should be proportionate at a societal level, as
well. This primarily relates to the selection of research participants:
considering who may benefit from the knowledge gained from this
research, are all members of that population equally likely to bear the
Research Methods in Psychology 6
Peer (P)review
risks, i.e., participate in the research? If the balance of these factors is
skewed, what attempts, if any, are made to address it?
Your recommendation
Taking all of these ethical and scientific factors into consideration, how much
revision is necessary before this study can be conducted? Is it essentially ready in
its current form? Are there some significant changes that would need to be made?
Or is a more thorough rewrite necessary?

Augmented Reality: Effects on Interpersonal Social Interactions
Vianey Garcia
Santa Monica
College
Psych 7: Research Methods in
Psychology
Professor Smith-Clark
May 11,
2020
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Humans live on two worlds, the real world, and the digital world. But there is a third
world that integrates both the palpable environments from the real world and the
streaming
information from the digital world. Augmented reality (AR) is “an enhanced image or
environment as viewed on a screen or other display, [that is] produced by
overlaying
computer-generated images, sounds, or other data [onto] a real-world environment”(“Augmented
reality”). The people and objects seen in AR settings are virtual agents, they do not exist in
reality but to varying degrees interact with the space to create an illusion of social
and
environmental understanding. “Most AR systems use AR agents which are software-based
virtual entities that sense and interact with their environment” (Campbell, Stafford, Holz, &
O’Hare, 2013). AR hardware comes in many forms, including integration into hand-held devices
like cell phones and devices specifically made to experience an AR world like head-mounts
and
glasses. As a design student, I am interested in how people experience the world and how we
can
improve those experiences through technology. AR is crucial in changing the future of how we
learn, explore, and create in the physical world and is becoming more pervasive in
today’s
society. I have many questions wondering about AR’s impact on society and how society will
impact AR use. Technology is affecting communication, interpersonal relationships, and how
people in the world view each other, among other things. With the growth of AR people are
connected in a way they were not before, both positively and negatively. Positively people are
connected to parts of the world, unlimited information, experiences, and knowledge. While on
the other hand by connecting into these spaces people seclude themselves by putting a screen or
device between them and the society that exists in their physical environment. What I am
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interested in learning is how these interpersonal relationships are affected by AR. Can AR be a
benefit to interpersonal interactions or is it a detriment? Mainly I want to understand how the
transition of the broader societal use of augmented reality devices affects interpersonal
social
interactions?
Most studies on AR tests how effective it is in the context of its system, uses, and
design
but in the context of social interactions, most are evaluative studies. The article “Social
Interaction in Augmented Reality” by Mark Roman Miller, Hanseul Jun, Fernanda Herrera,
Jacob Yu Villa, Greg Welch, and Jeremy N. Bailenson (2019) builds off of information from
previous studies that focus on qualitative findings of the user’s interpretation of the agent’s social
presence. The studies found that the more realistically the agent behaved socially with the user
and physically with the surroundings the more the agent seemed real (Miller et al., 2019). The
researchers build from what was learned in previous studies and focuses on “how AR
social
interaction changes task performance, nonverbal behavior, and social connection with other
physically co-located
people”.
The first study examines task performance. The previous studies on user’s task
performance indicated that social facilitation: performing easy tasks faster with an audience, and
social inhibition: struggling with difficult tasks with an audience (Miller et al., 2019) will reign
true with both a human and virtual human. The hypothesis presented agrees with the previous
studies, Miller et al. states “compared to being alone, participants who perform an easy
cognitive
task in the presence of an AR agent will have enhanced performance while participants
who
perform a difficult cognitive task in the presence of the same AR agent will have
impaired
performance” (2019).
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To test the hypothesis the researchers conducted a study that recruited 60
total
participants from Stanford University: 32 female, 28 male; 58 participants were ages 18-24,
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ages 25-35 (Miller et al., 2019). The manipulated variables were the difficulty level of the
anagram the participant was tasked to complete, easy or hard, and whether the AR agent,
that
was visible with Microsoft HoloLens AR headset, was present in the room with the participant as
they did the task. “The experimenter instructed participants to solve as many anagrams as
possible in the allotted time, to solve in any order they would like, and to speak the solution word
aloud each time they solved an anagram” (Miller et al., 2019). This was repeated three times per
participant for anagram difficulty and the presence of the agent. Participants earned points for
anagrams solved correctly ranging from
0-10.
The results indicated the hypothesis was supported and provide “the first
empirical
evidence suggesting that virtual humans in AR can socially influence performance”(Miller et al.,
2019). Having the AR agent in the room affected the score positively when the anagram was
easy and negatively when the anagram was difficult compared to when they were alone.
Although, the effect does not extend to multiple trials for two possible reasons: the agent does
not act socially with the participant and the participant gets used to the agent and no longer
feels
pressured (Miller et al., 2019).
The second study examines the association of virtual humans in a physical environment
and how participants interact with the environment once the agent is gone. Will participants “act
in accordance with social norms when interacting with an agent in AR?”(Miller et al.,
2019).
“Will participants avoid a rotation direction that requires turning their heads away from the
agent
as they choose a seat in order to maintain eye-contact?”(Miller et al., 2019). The hypothesis
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predicts that users both wearing and not wearing the AR headset will sit on the chair without
the
agent more often than on the agent (Miller et al., 2019). This is believed because humans
associate the spaces that were encompassed by people with the people after they are no longer
there. And from the previous research, it was learned that humans usually follow social norms
when dealing with AR agents.
The participants in this study were also recruited from Stanford University with the
same
age ranges sans two additional participants ages 48-65. There were a total of 56 participants:
40
females and 16 males (Miller et al., 2019). The participants continued using Microsoft HaloLens
in this experiment. All participants wore the headset to start the experiment, they witnessed the
agent walk across the room, randomly sit on one of the two available chairs, face them, and tell
the participants about itself. The experimenters did not know what chair the agent sat in for
certain but made assumptions based on participants’ behavior. A random amount of participants
were asked to remove the headsets and they were all asked to sit in one of the two chairs in front
of them under the guise of answering a questionnaire (Miller et al., 2019). The variables
manipulated were the participants’ use of the AR headset. The study measured what chair the
participant chose to sit in and their head orientation using tracking data from the headset to
determine if they faced the agent or not (Miller et al., 2019).
The experimenters found that their hypothesis was supported: all of the participants with
the headset avoided sitting on the agent and those who removed the headset were more likely
to
sit in the chair without the agent. The research question of whether participants would maintain
eye contact with the agent determined that indeed “Twenty-five out of the twenty-seven
participants in the headset condition rotated in order to face the agent, as opposed to turn
their
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back on it” (Miller et al., 2019). It is unclear whether the outcome indicated that the user faced
the agent for interpersonal social reasons demonstrating a social norm or if it is purely
because
the agent existed in the space meaning that it could be replaced by a different agent that is not a
person and have the same result. (Miller et al., 2019).
The third experiment conducted in this study examines the effects of AR with
interpersonal relations between a person wearing the headset and a person without. Will pairs
where one of the participants is blocked by virtual content “have [a] lower social presence,
interpersonal attraction, and perceived closeness”(Miller et al., 2019) than pairs that are
not
blocked by virtual content? When one participant wears an AR headset during face-to-face (FtF)
interaction and the other does not, does that affect how “participants feel about their
respective
partner in terms of social presence, interpersonal attraction, and perceived partner
closeness?”(Miller et al., 2019). The experimenters hypothesize that the AR headset and virtual
content that blocks the conversation partner will disrupt social
norms.
The participants were recruited from an undergrad course from Stanford
University.
There were a total of 102 participants: 54 female, 48 male). Each couple was assigned to be of
the same sex and to have never have met before. One of the participants was randomly assigned
to wear the Microsoft HoloLens AR headset while the other did not. The participant wearing the
headset saw the university logo in one of two positions either next to their partner so they had a
clear view of their face or in front of their partner’s face blocking its view. The participant
without the headset was not aware of what their partner saw. The participants were asked to
discuss an interesting thing that happened to them in the last month for five minutes in order
to
test their social interaction (Miller et al.,
2019).
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The researchers measured the closeness of the relationship with the Inclusion of the
Other
in Self (IOS) Scale which is “a single-item pictorial measure for perceived
interpersonal
connectedness… Different degrees of overlap correspond to different degrees of sensed
closeness”(“Your Other Half?”, 2014). To measure the social presence and interpersonal
attraction the experimenters used a five-point Likert scale (Miller et al., 2019). The results
indicated that “participants wearing headsets felt significantly less connected to their
partners
and rated their non-headset partner with significantly lower social presence” (Miller et al., 2019).
The study hypothesis was partially supported because it did disrupt participants with the
AR
headset but those without it were not
affected.
The results of the three studies conducted by Miller et al. found that AR devices affect
how people interact with their environment and affect how they interact socially with other
people. Studies still need to go in more depth on whether it is because AR is a novelty
experience that attracts attention or that AR agents command a social presence similar to that of
a human. From reading this study I have found that the most prominent insight is that AR
changes the way users experience the world. I wonder how this study would differentiate new
AR users compared to those who experience AR
frequently.
The second research article I read, “Communication Behaviors in
Co-located
Collaborative AR Interfaces” by Mark Billinghurst, Daniel Belcher, Arnab Gupta, and Kiyoshi
Kiyokaw, explored experimenting with AR in the context of communicating in a collaborative
space. They want to learn about the effects of AR on communication behaviors. Building off of
previous research that finds that AR naturally facilitates collaboration and face to face
communication. The reason behind this is “because users can view and manipulate virtual
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models while seeing each other in the real world, allowing natural nonverbal
communication
cues to regulate the collaboration” (2003,
p.397).
In both Experiment 1 and 2 that was conducted by Billinghurst et al. (2003) the
experiment measured performance time, it measured the process using videotape
transcriptions
for speech and gesture features, and measured quantitative data using surveys and interviews to
capture the user’s experience (p.399).
The first experiment: Communication in a Collaborative AR Interface, studied
the
differences between collaboration using an AR interface, a projection screen-based display, and
FtF interactions. Their hypothesis states users will be able to communicate with non-verbal cues
and gestures to interact with objects in FtF and AR conditions more easily than
projection-screen
based conditions. They believe this is the case because of the characteristics of each of the
conditions: FtF conditions interact us natural object manipulation, two hands are used and it
transmits communication wirelessly with space-multiplexed input. AR conditions interact
tangibly, use two hands, and also use space-multiplexed input. Projection-screen based
interactions are mouse-based, one-handed, and time-multiplexed, meaning that it uses the time
to
separate the data streams (Billinghurst et al., 2003, pp.399-400). AR characteristics are more
closely related to FtF interactions making the behavior more intuitive.
The participants in the experiment were 28 total adults (14 pairs): 12 females, 16
males
paired by gender with ages ranging from 21-38. The results were drawn from 12 pairs the
remaining pairs had incomplete results (Billinghurst et al., 2003, p.404). The experimenters used
a within-subject design to ensure that each pair of participants completed every condition.
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The participants were tasked with a puzzle to build a town using verbal and gestural
communication that needed to satisfy ten complementary rules split between the two
participants. The participants had to arrange the buildings using three different conditions. FtF
with real model buildings on a table. Using an AR head-mounted display and camera that
overlayed virtual models onto cards with Japanese characters. And with projection-screen based
interactions where participants both faced a projection screen opposite to them, cards
with
magnet trackers and button mounts were represented as graphical building models on the
screen
(Billinghurst et al., 2003, pp.400-402). The variables were the conditions in which the
participants are building this town: FtF, with AR and with projection-screen based interaction.
The results indicated that the hypothesis was refuted, the AR condition caused the
participants to finish slower than the other conditions. “There was no significant difference in
performance between the FTF and [projection-screen based] condition. However, there was a
significant difference between the [projection-screeen based] condition and the AR condition
and
between the FtF condition and the AR condition” (Billinghurst et al., 2003, p.404). When
measuring the communication process it was found that while taking turns “there was
no
difference in the average number of words per turn or in the number of turns per second”
(Billinghurst et al., 2003, p.404). The experimenters counted the deictic phrases: this, that, or
there; and found they are used more in AR conditions than projection-screen based
conditions
and no difference in the other variations of conditions (Billinghurst et al., 2003,
p.404).
Simultaneous speech, when two participants spoke at the same time, was measured and there was
no difference across conditions. (Billinghurst et al., 2003, p.404). More questions were asked in
the AR condition than the other conditions but that was due to the “reduction in the perceptual
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cues caused by the AR head-mounted display” (Billinghurst et al., 2003, p.406). Without the
questions, the difference is not significant. To measure gestural communication experimenters
grouped them into point gestures (point), pick gestures (pick) collaborative gestures between
participants (collab), and other. They found that most gestures were pick (66%), followed by
point (30%). There was found to be a higher percentage of pick in the projection-screen based
condition with