Result Paper Essay Sample

Advice in a cheating scenario: The impact of cognitive dissonance

Method
Research design
In this study, the independent variable, “writing task” documents was subjected to manipulation into three levels: D for Dissonance, P for Positive, and N for neutral so as to study its effect on the dependent variable (advice given to a friend in a cheating scenario). A study involving manipulation of independent variables is termed as experimental (Levine & Parkinson, 1994, p. 12).

Participants

The participants consisted of FIU students who were not taking a course in psychology research methods class in the spring semester, 2015. The sample consisted of hundred and twenty six students of diverse backgrounds which were19.0% were Hispanic, 68.3% Caucasian, 8,7% African American, and 4.0% Asian American. 37.3% being males and 62.7% being females.

Materials and procedures

The instruments used include oral interviews and writing task essays in the first phase of the study. The oral interview was used to get the oral informed consent of the participant which is a requirement in research ethics (Harris, 2008, p. 45). On the other hand, three writing task surveys were used to describe events in the lives of the participants. The writing task is the primary independent variable in the study and consists of three levels D, P, and N. In the second phase, a feeling questionnaire consisting of three parts was used. Part one of this assessed the feelings of the participants, part two required the participants to read a short scenario and advice their fellow students to cheat or not to. The last part asked for demographic information. After this phase, debriefing was done to students.

Results

The results of data analysis are presented in the tables below with corresponding interpretations.
There were 124 respondents in the study. The mean of the participants in the construct of interest is 22.3145 and standard deviation is 6.30443. The age of the participants ranged from 17.00 to 58.00.
The table above shows that the percentages of female and male who participated in the study are 37.3% and 62.7% respectively.
In the table above, it is shown that out of the 126 participants, 19.0% were Hispanic, 68.3% Caucasian, 8,7% African American, and 4.0% Asian American.
Of the 31.7% 31.7% were from other language backgrounds, 68.5% were Chinese, 1.6% French, and .8% Spanish
Out of the 126 participants, 91.3% were students at FIU and 7.9% were not.

References

Harris, P. (2008). Designing and reporting experiments in psychology (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education
Levine, G. & Parkinson, S. (1994). Experimental methods in psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum Associates