Ideas for a psychological experiment?

As part of our Research Methods unit, our teacher is having us design and carry out our own experiment. However, I am super stuck for ideas that are suitable enough. There are only a few conditions that need to be met but for some reason it is still really hard to think of anything.

1. It needs to be quantitative
2. No ethical issues involved - this includes embarrassment of the participants, or scaring them or anything
3. There needs to be as few extraneous variables as possible - there will always be a lot but we have to try to limit them
4. And this one is my own condition - I actually want it to be interesting and applicable to real life.

And if you do post an idea, then thank you soooo much in advance. This would really be helping me out. ^.^

Hi there,

While you're waiting for an answer, did you know we have 300,000 study resources that could answer your question in TSR's Learn together section?

We have everything from Teacher Marked Essays to Mindmaps and Quizzes to help you with your work. Take a look around.

If you're stuck on how to get started, try creating some resources. It's free to do and can help breakdown tough topics into manageable chunks. Get creating now.

Thanks!

Not sure what all of this is about? Head here to find out more.

Reply 2

Davalla

20

Original post by Nisr123

As part of our Research Methods unit, our teacher is having us design and carry out our own experiment. However, I am super stuck for ideas that are suitable enough. There are only a few conditions that need to be met but for some reason it is still really hard to think of anything.

1. It needs to be quantitative
2. No ethical issues involved - this includes embarrassment of the participants, or scaring them or anything
3. There needs to be as few extraneous variables as possible - there will always be a lot but we have to try to limit them
4. And this one is my own condition - I actually want it to be interesting and applicable to real life.

And if you do post an idea, then thank you soooo much in advance. This would really be helping me out. ^.^

Something as simple as a memory - list recollection investigation?
-Uses quantitative data
-Can be done in private to reduce embarrassment
-Can use a controlled environment
-May not be massively interesting, but may still have some real life applications.

Reply 3

Pinkberry_y

19

How about effect of noise on memory? So have 5 students in 2 different rooms one with a loud playing radio on or just music and another in complete silence. Give them a list of words to memorise for 5 minutes. Then get the groups together again and make them do a little activity eg watch a 10 minute YouTube video to stop them rehearsing the words in their heads. Then ask them to recall the words from the list given.

Design: independent groups
Laboratory experiment
Randomly assign students to each of the two rooms
Control variables: age (all students from the same year), gender (have a mix of genders in each room or alternatively only use males or females).

Hope that helped! :smile:

Posted from TSR Mobile

Ideas for a psychological experiment?

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you