Experimental Psychology
Research Proposal

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Research Proposal

Cover Page
Same as full paper. Includes, title, authors names, affiliation, running head, manuscript header and page number.

Introduction
Same as in full paper, but slightly smaller. You need 5 - 10 references, but will add more to the final paper. The introduction is written in the same manner for the proposal as for the final paper. The goal is to review the literature and explain how you proposed project is derived from the literature. The introduction ends with clear statements of your hypotheses.

Methods

• Participants: how many do you think you'll need and do they have any special qualifications
• Design: Describe the design you plan to use. Describe you independent and dependent variables, which are between subjects and which within subjects.
• Apparatus: What equipment will you need?
• Stimuli: Describe the stimuli you plan to use or raise any questions you have about stimuli.
• Materials: Describe the questions you plan to ask the subjects. What surveys will you need? Are written assessments needed? Do you need to find assessments for responses or personality characteristics (e.g. introversion/extroversion, gender identity)
• Procedure: What is the exact procedure you plan to carry out. Will participants be run alone or in groups? Raise any questions you have about timing, location, counterbalancing, or other procedures.

Results
Describe the statistical analyses you plan to use to analyze your data. Make sure you have a plan for ALL the data you have collected.

Discussion
If you find significant results - so what? Why are they important and how do they fit into the literature. What might be some alternative explanations or criticisms of your experiment.

If you fail to find results or they turn out differently then you expected - how might you explain the possible differences or failure of the experiment.