Social Psychology

Group Research Project Instructions

In groups of five (5) you will propose doing hands-on research about a concept
you learned in class that interests you. You will need to inform me of your
partners and the research topic you choose before conducting any research.
Once we have agreed to your research topic you will begin to design an interview,
questionnaire, or participant observation procedure to carry out your project.
You will share this effort with me and through this process we will learn a great
deal about what is involved in carrying out social science research. This learning
will be very valuable for you in the future.
No student may actually apply his or her questionnaire, interview schedule, or
participant observation process until I have approved it. These are some limiting
conditions on what you can do:
 Under no circumstances can questions be asked that could conceivably
result in information that might reflect badly upon a subject, or cause
them injury. Not even if the questions are answered anonymously.
 If filming or videos are used as tools in your project, participants must give
their approval and consent for you to have it shown to anyone else.
Confidentiality is of utmost importance should a participant not want any
information divulged to any third party.
 Minors (anyone under 18 years old) cannot be interviewed or questioned
under any circumstances.

Group Project Deliverables:

1) A Project Report (15-20 pages) must include:
 A description of how the research was done, including what kinds of
people were interviewed or observed, but never indicated by name.
 Logical connection(s) between the data you collected and your initial
questions or hypotheses.
 Any additional discussion you find relevant, such as limitations of your
study, things you would do differently next time, difficulties in
accomplishing the project, further implications of what was discovered,
etc.
 All interviews, questionnaires, observations, etc. materials collected or
produced during the course of the project.
 Your project must be neatly presented, in an appropriate folder or binder,
and handed to me personally on the day you present your findings to the
class.
2) A ten-fifteen (10-15) minutes Presentation of your findings to the instructor.
This presentation must not exceed ten (15) minutes or each additional minute
will result in five-points reduction.
Project Grading Criteria:

Your research project will be graded on the following criteria:

70%: Content
 Usage & Understanding of Key Concepts & Terms
 Topic Originality/Creativity
 Connection/Relevance to Vietnam
 Research Materials & References

30%: Organizational Structure & Coherence

 English Competence (sentence structure, grammar, and spelling)
 Paper & Presentation Layout & Organization (font size, margins)
 Referencing (footnotes, endnotes)
 Time Management