HL Psychology Internal Assessment—Research Proposal

Name(s): Noora Ijäs and Lillian Lin

Aim (state the purpose of your research)
To find out whether or not food presentation affects how people taste the food.

Research hypothesis (make sure that it is operationalized)

H1: The mean rating given to white milk will be significantly greater than the mean
rating given to green milk.
Null hypothesis (your goal is to reject this)
H0: There is no significant difference between the mean rating of white milk, and poorly
presentedgreen milk.
Independent variable (clearly indicate operational conditions)

Color of the milk.

Dependent variable (fully and clearly operationalized)

How the milk is rated by the participants.

Experimental design (Independent measures or repeated measures, and

justification)
Repeated measures- The same participant will taste both conditions of the milk so that
there is less variation between conditions. This is also more economical because fewer
subjects are needed considering the time limit we have.
Inferential test (Sign test, Chi
Data (Ordinal, nominal, or interval) squared, Wilcoxon, or Mann-
Whitney)

Ordinal Data Wilcoxon signed ranks test

Graph (sketch and fully label a graph of anticipated results) Participants

Target population characteristics
The ratings for dark green m ilk and plain w hite
(age, grade, gender, culture,
m ilk
setting, etc.):
Female and male students from an
16
international high school located in an
14
urban city in South-east Asia, from
12
ages 16-18.
10
8
Relevance to H1 (explicitly relate
6 your target population to your H1):
4 Students from an international
2 school may have different
0 perception on what they see as
1 2
The C olor of the M ilk (1=plain white milk, 2= dark green
disgusting. For example, someone
milk) might see a brown banana and not
think it’s disgusting.
 Sample size: 20 people
Selection and allocation
procedures: We will use
opportunity sampling, we would go
to one place during the time we
have free and ask people to
participate in our experiment. We
will use repeated measures where
the same participant will taste both
conditions of the yogurt so that
there is less variation between
conditions. It is also more
economical because fewer subjects
are needed especially with limited
amount of time.
Ethical considerations (explain in detail how you will handle each of the following)
Informed consent: We will type out a consent form which will explain the procedure of
our experiment and have each participant sign this form before participating.
Right to withdrawal: On the informed consent form it will be made clear that they have
to right to withdraw from the experiment at any given time, either during or after the
experiment. If they wish to withdraw from the experiment after data has been collected,
they will be able to email us and inform that they wish to withdraw from the experiment,
in which case their data will be removed.
Anonymity and confidentiality: No names will be asked on any forms. All forms will be
kept in a folder, which will be kept in a locked locker, unless data is being used for
analysis.
Debriefing: The informed consent form will include a space for the participant’s email
address and after the experiment and data analysis, each participant will be debriefed
about what the results show.
Further ethical issues (check any of the following that apply to your research)

Invasion of privacy Stress and discomfort

Deception Involuntary participation
Procedure
Give a detailed step-by-step description of your procedure, including explanation of how you will
deal with reliability and validity, confounding/extraneous variables and bias, like demand
characteristics, experimenter expectancies, order effects, distraction, confusion, etc. Your
description must be detailed enough to be easily replicable.

1. We searched online (JSTOR, EBSCOHOST) for similar topic to back our experiment
2. We typed out our consent form (see appendix A) and made 20 copies
3. We typed out a likert scale that has numbers from 1-5 from 1 being the lowest and 5
the highest (see appendix B) and made 20 copies
4. Go to the Upper School Office and find the list containing ID numbers of all the high
school students and then use a random number generator to pick out 20 students.
Because we are doing repeated measures we can’t use too many people because
they are participating in both conditions and also less variation between conditions.
5. Buy two plain milk and in only one of them add green food coloring
6. Buy 40 small cups for the milk
7. Shake the milk before serving
8. Pour the milk into a small cup and place them on a tray
9. Have ten people drink the green milk first then the plain milk and another 10 drink
the plain milk first and then the green milk
10. Since we are doing oppourtintly sampling we will, whenever either of us have free
and ask people who are there at the time. We will tell them that we are from Mr.
Hobbs psychology class and we are doing an experiment. Then if they agree to
participate in this experiment we then hand the informed consent form to them and
they fill it out. After that’s done we first let them drink the plain milk and they rate it,
then we give them the green milk and they rate it. We will try to make the
experiment quick so that the participant won’t have enough time to figure out the
aim of the experiment or be distracted in anyway. The only way in our experiment to
avoid demand characteristics is to use deception to hide our aim so that they won’t
be able to guess what it is. We will try to ask them the drink the milk when there
isn’t too many people around so that they won’t feel too uncomfortable having
people looking at them drink the milk.
To avoid experimenter expectancies we can have another person who’s not in
psychology class and no nothing about our aims to give the participants the milk and
record down the results, we the experimenters will not accidentally say words that
might pressure or help the participant know the aim of the experiment.