Title, introduction, method, results - writing a Research Proposal in APA Format

Direction: For this assignment, you will provide an APA style paper that includes:

1. Title Page

2. Introduction

3. Method Section (future tense)

4. Brief "Expected Results" section (future tense)

In addition, you will provide the Informed Consent and Debriefing forms. Credit Allocation Request

Form and Research Approval Form will also need to be completed.

Grading Criteria:

1. Is there a title page and is it APA style?

2. For Introduction:

a. How well did you describe the problem/question?

b. Did you review relevant literature to communicate current state of the field?

c. Did you relate the literature to your study?

d. Did you cite sources whenever you made a claim?

e. Are your citations APA style?

f. Did you clearly define (operational definitions) your variables?
ex: Variables different lights, amount of time, when its on or off etc

g. Did you clearly state your hypothesis?

3. For Method:

a. Are your subheadings correct and in the correct order?

b. Did you discuss relevant information about your participants?

c. Did you provide enough information in your materials section to replicate your study?

d. Did you provide enough information about your procedure to replicate your study?

4. For "Expected Results:"

a. Did you state what you expect to find in your study?

So far I have written this. Is it a good start? Also, I am kind of struck.
There is a possibility different lighting in a classroom can affect the attention span of students during lectures. Different lighting in a classroom will tests how long the students can paid attention to the lectures. Depending on the lights, the students may or may not want to paid attention to lectures. If the students can't paid attention to the lectures, they would miss out on important information.

i have written the part for methods and results but not the introduction yet.

METHOD
Subjects
The requirements were for college level students who were not blind, deaf, and needed to be able to differentiate between light and dark. The population size is about 174 people. The effects size is about .5 and the alpha level is about .05. The participants will be randomly assign to to either the room with the lighting on or dim lighting.

Long term recall
An article, The Roots of Addiction, will be read to the participants. After reading the article, the participants will be distracted by showing them a comedy clip from youtube. After the distraction of a youtube clip, the multiple choice questions will be handed out. The participants will be answering 10 multiple choice questions from the article, The Roots of Addiction.

Short term recall
A given task that has 15 words shown in power point slides. The words will be shown on the overhead projector in the dark room. The words will be random. After all 15 words are shown, the participants will be given time to write down all the words shown on the power point slides that they can remember.

Attention
A task to test how well the participants are paying attention. The task is perform by having three sheets of paper that is single space with random letters in all capitals. There will be 5 target letters that the participants have to find.

Problem solving
A task were the participants are given a logic sequence puzzle to test their cognitive performance to be completed in 15 minutes. The logic sequence is a puzzle were the participants have to think where the balls go exactly by following the 3 clues given. The balls are not in the correct order. By following the 3 clues, there will be a new set of sequence.

Procedure
The participants in the classroom like setting with lights on will be tested on long term recall and problem solving skills. The task is to read an article to the participants and after finish reading, they will be given a puzzle as a distraction following by a 10 multiple choice questions to be completed. The participants in the classroom like setting with dim lighting will be tested on short term recall and attention. The task is to show random words on the overhead projector for short term recall and single letters on papers for attention. The participants will be given enough time to complete all tasks. The time limit for each task is as follows, reading an article will be about 10 minutes, distracting the participants with the youtube clip will be about 15 minutes, answering 10 multiple choice questions will be about 15 minutes, showing 15 words on the power point slides will be about 15 minutes, remembering 5 target random letters will be about 5 minutes, and the logic sequence puzzle will be about 20 minutes.

RESULTS
Students can continue to pay attention to lectures if the lights are dimmed. There will be no significant changes for the short term and long term recall. Students can remember most of the information for the long term recall, but for the short term they typically recall about half of the information.

There is a possibility It is possible that differen t kinds of lighting in a classroom can affect the attention span of students during lectures. Different kinds of lighting in a classroomwill be used t o test how long the students can pay attention to the lectures. Depending on the lights, the students may or may not want to paid pay attention to lectures.

This part should be a diferent paragraph, because the importance of paying attention is a different subject:
If the students can't pay attention to the lectures, they will miss out on important information.

You should tell us why you chose the article that you chose.

Also, I wonder if maybe you can come up with better methodology. It does not have to be a test that students take. It is tough to measure their ability to pay attention by using a test, because many other factors affect how well they do... not just the lighting.

check this out: sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/1212-are_you_really_paying_att ention.htm

Also, you could use a qualitative method for this. You could interview people about their opinions on the effect lighting has.

:-)

oh, ok thanks.
the methods has to like match what my group is doing.

Yep, and group work can be tough to coordinate! It sounds like a great project, though.

This kind of writing is very difficult sometimes, and people can always criticize your methods... but no research study is perfect. This one tackles an important topic. It seems like many similar studies must have already been done. You should look at what kinds of similar studies have already been done, and that wll be a good way to help you get through this and avoid problems.