1. Conduct a Psychology Experiment
DR MD. INTEKHAB-UR-RAHMAN
UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
B.N.MANDAL UNIVERSITY
MADHEPURA-BIHAR
INDIA, PIN-852113

2. Getting Started
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3. Do you need to perform an
experiment for your psychology
class? Don't panic! Learn more
about ten of the steps you
should follow in order to
successfully complete a
psychology experiment.
Next

4. Conducting your first psychology experiment
can be a long, complicated, and
intimidating process. It can be especially
confusing if you are not quite sure where
to begin or which steps to take. Like other
sciences, psychology utilizes the
scientific method and bases conclusions
upon empirical evidence. When conducting
an experiment, it is important to follow the
five basic steps of the scientific method:
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5. Scientific methods
1. Ask a question that can be
tested
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6. 2. Design a study and collect data
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7. 3. Analyze results and reach
conclusions
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8. 4. Share the results with the
scientific community
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9. 5. Replicate the results
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10. • These five steps serve as a
general outline of the entire
process. Continue to get more
details the ten steps you should
follow while conducting your
psychology experiment.
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11. • Step 1: Find a Problem or

12. Find a Research Problem
or Question
/
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13. The first step in your psychology
experiment is to come up with a
research question or problem.
Learn more below about some
of the places to look for
ideas for your psychology experimen
.

14. Picking a research problem can
be one of the most challenging
steps. After all, there are so
many different topics you might
choose to investigate. Stumped
for an idea? Consider some of
the following:

15. Investigate a
commonly held
belief.
. Folk psychology is a good source of
unanswered questions that can serve as
the basis for psychological research. For
example, many people believe that staying
up all night to cram for a big exam can
actually hurt test performance. You could
conduct a study in which you compare the
test scores of students who stayed up all
night studying, versus the scores of
students who got a full night's sleep prior
to the exam.

16. Review psychology
literature.
. Published studies are a great
source of unanswered research
questions. In many cases, the
authors will even note the need
for further research. Find a
published study that you find
intriguing, and then come up
with some questions that
require further exploration.

17. Think about everyday
problems.
. There are many practical
applications for psychology
research. Explore various problems
that you or others face each day, and
then consider how you could
research potential solutions. For
example, you might investigate
different memorization strategies to
determine which methods are most
effective.

18. Step 2: Define Your Vari
• . Operationally Define
Your Variables
Image courtesy Craig Jewell

19. Before you begin your psychology
experiment, it is essential to
operationally define all of your
variables.

20. Variables
Variables are anything that might impact the
outcome of your study. An operational
definition describes exactly what the
variables are and how they are measured
within the context of your study. For
example, if you were doing a study on the
impact of sleep deprivation on driving
performance, you would need to
operationally define what you mean by
sleep deprivation and driving performance.

21. In this example you might define
sleep deprivation as getting
less than seven hours of sleep
at night and define driving
performance as how well a
participant does on a driving
test.

22. What is the purpose of
operationally defining
variables? The main purpose is
control. By understanding what
your are measuring, you can
control for it by holding the
variable constant between all of
the groups or manipulating it as
an independent variable.

23. Step 3: Develop a Hypot

24. Develop a Hypothesis
The next step in conducting your psychology
experiment is to develop a testable
hypothesis.
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25. The next step is to develop a testable
hypothesis that predicts how the
operationally defined variables are
related. In our example in the
previous step, our hypothesis might
be: "Students who are sleep deprived
will perform worse than students
who are not sleep deprived on a test
of driving performance."

26. In order to determine if the results of
the study are significant, it is
essential to also have a null
hypothesis. The null hypothesis is
the prediction that one variable will
have no association to the other
variable. In other words, the null
hypothesis assumes that there will
be no difference in the effects of the
two treatments in our experimental
and control groups.

27. The null hypothesis is assumed to
be valid unless contradicted by
the results. The experimenters
can either reject the null
hypothesis in favor of the
alternative hypothesis or not
reject the null hypothesis.

28. It is important to remember that not
rejecting the null hypothesis does
not mean that you are accepting the
null hypothesis. To say that you are
accepting the null hypothesis is to
suggest that something is true
simply because you did not find any
evidence against it. This represents
a logical fallacy that should be
avoided in scientific research.

29. Step 4: Conduct Backgro

30. 4. Conduct
Background Research
Image courtesy Sanja Gjenero

31. Before you start your psychology
experiment, you need to review
the previously existing
literature on your topic.

32. Once you have developed a testable
hypothesis, it is important to spend
some time doing some background
research. What do researchers
already know about your topic? What
questions remain unanswered? You
can learn about previous research on
your topic by exploring books,
journal articles, online databases,
newspapers, and websites devoted
to your subject.

33. Reasons to conduct
background research:

34. • Reading previous research
helps you gain a better
understanding of what you will
encounter during your own
experiment.

35. • Understanding the background
of your topic provides a better
basis for your own hypothesis.
After conducting a thorough
review of the literature, you
might choose to alter your own
hypothesis.

36. • Background research also
allows you to explain why you
chose to investigate your
particular hypothesis and
articulate why the topic merits
further exploration.

37. As you research the history of
your topic, remember to take
careful notes and create a
working bibliography of your
sources. This information will
be valuable when you begin to
write up your experiment
results.

38. Step 5: Choose an Exper

39. 5. Select an
Experimental Design
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40. Learn more about three of the basic
experimental designs you might use when
conducting your psychology experiment.
After conducting background
research and finalizing your
hypothesis, your next step is to
develop an experimental design.
There are three basic types of
designs that you might utilize.
Each has its own strengths and
weaknesses.

41. Pre-Experimental
Designs
Pre-Experimental Designs: This type of
experimental design does not include a
control group. A single group of
participants is studied, and there is no
comparison between a treatment group
and a control group. Examples of pre-
experimental designs include case studies
(one group is given a treatment and the
results are measured) and pre-test/post-
test studies (one group is tested, given a
treatment and then retested).

42. Quasi-Experimental
Designs
Quasi-Experimental Designs:
This type of experimental
design does include a control
group, but the design does not
include randomization.

43. True Experimental
Designs
True Experimental Designs: A
true experimental design
include both of the elements
that the pre-experimental
designs and quasi-experimental
designs lack on their own -
control groups and random
assignment to groups.

44. Step 6: Standardize You

45. 6. Standardize
Your Procedures
Standardizing your procedures helps ensure that the things that
you are comparing are equivalent.
Morganlane Productions/iStockPhoto

46. In order to arrive at legitimate conclusions, it
is essential to compare apples to apples.
Each participant in each group must
receive the same treatment under the
same conditions. For example, in our
hypothetical study on the effects of sleep
deprivation on driving performance, the
driving test must be administered to each
participant in the same way. The driving
course must be the same, the obstacles
faced must be the same, and the time
given must be the same.

47. Step 7: Choose Your Par

48. 7. Choose
Your Participants
When conducting your experiment,
you do not need to test every
individual in a group. Instead, you
can select a random sample of
participants from the larger
population.
courtesy Michal Zacharzewski

49. Image In addition to making sure that the
testing conditions are standardized, it is
also essential to ensure that your pool of
participants is the same. If the individuals
in your control group (those who are not
sleep deprived) all happen to be amateur
race car drivers while your experimental
group (those that are sleep deprived) are
all people who just recently earned their
drivers licenses, your experiment will lack
standardization.

50. When choosing subjects, there are a number
of different techniques you can use. A
simple random sample involves randomly
selecting a number of participants from a
group. A stratified random sample requires
randomly selecting participants from
different subsets of the population. These
subsets might include characteristics such
as geographic location, age, sex, race, or
socioeconomic status.

51. Step 8: Perform Tests an

52. 8. Conduct Tests and
Collect Data
After carefully designing your study, now is the time to actually
conduct the experiment. Administer your testing procedures and then
collect the data from the participants.
Image courtesy Rich Legg/iStockPhoto

53. After you have selected participants, the
next steps are to conduct your tests and
collect the data. Prior to doing any testing,
however, there are a few important
concerns that need to be addressed. First,
you need to be sure that your testing
procedures are ethical. Generally, you will
need to gain permission to conduct any
type of testing with human participants by
submitting the details of your experiment
to your school's Institutional Review
Board, sometimes referred to as the
'Human Subjects Committee.'

54. After you have gained approval from
your academic institution's IRB, you
will need to present
informed consent forms to each of
your participants. This form offers
information on the study, the data
that will be gathered, and how the
results will be used. The form also
gives participants the option to
withdraw from the study at any point
in time.

55. Once this step has been
completed, you can begin
administering your testing
procedures and collecting the
data.

56. Step 9: Analyze the Resu

57. 9. Analyze the Results
The next step is to analyze the data that you collected during your
psychology experiment.
Image courtesy Sanja Gjenero

58. After collecting your data, it is time to
analyze the results of your
experiment. Researchers utilize
statistics to determine if the results
of the study support the original
hypothesis and to determine if the
results are statistically significant.
Statistical significance means that
the results of the study are unlikely
to have occurred simply by chance.

59. The types of statistical methods you use to
analyze your data depend largely on the
type of data that you collected. If you are
using a random sample of a larger
population, you will need to utilize
inferential statistics. These statistical
methods make inferences about how the
results relate to the population at large.
Because you are making inferences based
upon a sample, it has to be assumed that
there will be a certain margin of error.

60. Step 10: Share Your Res

61. 10. Write Up and Share
Your Results
The final step in conducting your psychology experiment is to
communicate your results. Learn more about the structure of a
psychology paper and find tips for writing each section.
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62. Your final task in conducting a psychology
experiment is to communicate your
results. By sharing your experiment with
the scientific community, you are
contributing to the knowledge base on that
particular topic. One of the most common
ways to share research results is to
publish the study in a peer-reviewed
professional journal. Other methods
include sharing results at conferences, in
book chapters, or in academic
presentations.

63. In your case, it is likely that your
class instructor will expect a
formal write-up of your
experiment in the same format
required in a professional
journal article or lab report:

64. • Title Page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion
• References
• Tables and Figures

65. THE END
**YHANK YOU**