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In Milestone 2 - you'll specify the design and
operationalizations in more detail and add specific expectations.
Because we need to converge on one specific design, you'll need to base your work for Milestone 2
on the collective general hypothesis and design that you can
access after completing Milestone 1 so before you start check out what
hypothesis and design you'll need to work from. Ok, so we have a hypothesis and
general design. What we need to do now is to flesh out this design. We need to
specify the operationalizations in more detail and be specific about our
expectations. Here are some questions to answer about the design and
operationalizations. If we're manipulating the independent variable
how will we do so? With a written instruction or images or video? How many
words? How many images, or how many minutes will the video last? What will
the content be? Are we going to use a questionnaire or test to measure the
dependent variable? How many items? What kind of response categories? Now the idea
is to come up with a more specific description of all the relevant
variables, without actually creating the manipulation or the measurement
materials just yet. Besides the operationalization of the manipulation
and measurement instrument you should describe your intended sample and
sampling method and other relevant procedures. For example the method of
assignment to conditions. Suppose our hypothesis is: "Exposure to violent
imagery will increase aggressive behavior. It will do so more strongly for
adolescents compared to people of other ages, and also for males compared to
females." Okay, based on this hypothesis a more elaborate research design,
describing the operationalizations and procedures in more detail would be this:
"The study will be conducted using an online questionnaire distributed amongst
a convenient sample of high school and college students in Amsterdam. The study
will be presented as a study on the emotional impact of types of images used
in newspaper articles. Exposure to violent imagery will be manipulated by
randomly assigning participants to a condition where they're shown either 10
violent images of buildings destroyed by terrorist
attacks - the experimental condition. Or 10 nonviolent images of similar, undamaged
buildings - this is the control condition. All images will be from recent newspaper
articles. Aggressive behavior will be assessed using the sum score on a
questionnaire consisting of 10 items - each rated on a five-point Likert scale,
that are indicative of aggressive tendencies. Participants will be asked
their gender and age, where students younger than 19 are considered
adolescents and all others are considered adults. Participants will be
debriefed about the real purpose of the study after completing the questionnaire."
Ok, keep in mind that we should be able to implement the design using an online
test or questionnaire.Also make sure that the manipulation and measurement
instruments are not offensive or hurtful. For example you can't use graphic
pictures of victims suffering horrible injuries, or a story about a child being
subjected to severe abuse. Manipulations that give participants false or overly
negative feedback are also out of the question.
Once you've described the detailed research design you can formulate your
expectations. In our example the expectations would be: "Participants in
the experimental condition, who see ten violent images, are expected to have a
significantly higher mean aggressiveness score than participants in the control
condition, who see ten non-violent images. This effect of an increased mean
aggressiveness score - due to exposure to violent imagery, is expected to be
significantly larger for adolescents compared to adult participants, and is
also expected to be significantly larger for males compared to females." Okay, do
you see what I did there? I reformulated the general hypothesis in terms of the
much more specific operationalizations that I came up with in my detailed
research design. Okay, with this information you should be able to
complete milestone 2. Remember, make sure that you base your work on the
collective general hypothesis and design. Take that general design and flesh it
out by specifying the operationalizations and procedures in more detail.
Take care that the material is not offensive or hurtful, and finally, don't
forget to describe your expectations. Formulate these in terms of the
operationalization. Okay good luck!
Annemarie Zand ScholtenAssistant Professor
