Psychology Student Problems

Now, I don't want to say that today put me at a standstill in my study by any means, but I will say today, my second day on my research project, has been much slower than my opening day. Much of today I have spent preparing for a few participants to pilot the experiment for me in order to see about how long the experiment actually lasts and to get a feel for the difficulty level of the experiment based on the opinions of college students.  Because this particular study has never been done on any young or older adults it is important for us to run a few practice trials to make sure that the program is running properly and smoothly, that the task is not too difficult and that the experiment can be completed in a reasonable about of time. Thus, I am running one practice trial today and definitely one (if not two) more practice trial tomorrow. Even in these pilot tests, the goal is to run the experiment as similiarly to the actual experiment as possible, because if everything in the practice trial runs smoothly, then the data gathered in the pilot testing can likely be used in the actual experiment data.

So, in preparation for these pilot tests, I spent the morning looking back over consent forms, demographic forms, information sheets, etc. to ensure that they are completely ready for the participants. Today, I also created a debriefing form to give to participants after they have completed the experiment. The purpose of a debrief is to educate the participant about the true nature of the experiment. Prior to many experiments, the participants are told very little about the task they are completing and are rarely given explanations as to why they are doing a certain task. Participants are not told much about the task in order to eliminate any bias that my come about from knowing too much about the experiment, which can lead to abnormal or bad data.

 While today may have been a little slow, running out first participants will prove exciting! I can’t wait to starting getting results and learning what the data has to say about our participants.

Stay tuned,

Reagan