Week 4 - Astrology Empirical Research Activity

Session 8 & 9 - Chapter 1 Recap & ERA

Open with a quick review of last session's content - 'Contemporary Perspectives on Psychology' and run through the Chapter 1 Test questions with the group.

Move back onto the concept of pseudo-sciences - specifically Astrology and explain that we will be working on the Astrology ERA for the next two sessions.

Hand out the relevant materials for the activity and run through the process that needs to be followed in order to collect the data - LA 1.19 of the textbook.

Ensure that all students understand what needs to happen before Thursday's session - class data will be collected then.

Move onto the writing up of the ERA with the class - run through the following notes:

Title: ???

Introduction

- This section introduces the key concepts relating to the study. In this case you will need to mention and explain the following ideas/concepts:

• The scientific nature of psychology including a definition.
• The concept of a pseudo-sciences => focusing on the field of astrology.
• The Barnum Effect - its origins and the how it relates to the field of astrology.
• The AIM of the study - To explore people's beliefs in personality descriptions based on astrological star signs... or something like that.
• An HYPOTHESIS for the study - That the participants will OR it is predicted that the participants will...

Method

• Participants - will need to wait until Thursday to complete this section.
• Materials - what was used to complete the study?
• Procedure - a step by step / dot point outline of what needed to occur for the study to take place.

Results

- You will receive the results on Thursday - this section only state the results of the study, no discussion is required.

Discussion

- In this section your results are interpreted and explained - use the questions below to guide your discussion.

• ·  Is the hypothesis accepted or rejected?
  ·  What was the overall mean of the entire sample? What does the numerical value mean?
  ·  What star signs believed the astrology predictions to be most accurate? (Include the numerical value and the interpretation).
  ·  What were the most believable / accurate of the descriptors across all star signs? (Include the numerical value and the interpretation). - Provide insight into why this might be the case...
  ·  What was the least believable / accurate of the descriptors across all of the star signs? (Include the numerical value and the interpretation). - Provide insight into why this might be the case...
  ·  What are the limitations to the study? Can we make a generalisation about the results we obtained? Sample size???
  ·  Are their any extraneous variables? (unwanted variables that may affect the dependent variable)?
  ·  Provide some suggestions that may contribute to more valid and reliable results for the study? (what would you do differently to allow for more valid results???)
  
  
  
  
   The ERA write up is due to be submitted on Thursday 28th February