Essay Instructions: BELOW IS THE PROJECT BOOK WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN AS A GUIDELINE:
In project one, we will guide you in conducting an experiment using a one-way design, to investigate the effects of media exposure on body image attitudes. You will use a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) as the method of analysis. On completion of this project you should therefore be able to:
1. Work collaboratively, with other students, to design a small-scale research study with a one-way design;
2. Carry out data collection (including ethical considerations) appropriate for a one-way design;
3. Use SPSS to perform a one-way ANOVA on the data; and
4. Write the results of this analysis in a standard format.
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If you choose to write up this project for your project report then you will also have the opportunity to demonstrate that you can:
4. Write a laboratory report in a standard format, including in-depth interpretation of results in the context of the theoretical perspectives presented here.
Design stages (step-by-step)
In practical terms you will need to have developed the following by the end of this session:
a) A design appropriate for your study (e.g. you may want to develop a design to examine the effects of presenting idealised images);
b) Stimuli for three conditions of your independent variable (e.g. you may want to present: idealised images vs. non-idealised images vs. a control condition);
c) Items to assess body image state (i.e. how will you measur your DV); and
d) All ethical documents and any other materials you may need.
To help you through this we suggest you work through the stages below.
Firstly, you need to discuss the background to the topic area with your group and decide whether to examine the effects of media exposure on men or women. You can discuss what it is about media exposure that you want to investigate, but the suggestion is that you investigate the influence of idealised images. It is unwise to try to include both men and women in the same experiment (and would confound your results). Once you have made the decision, you will then need to consider the following:
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a) What three conditions will you develop stimuli for? (e.g., idealised figures, non-idealised figures, control images with no figures). After reading some literature in this area you may wish to do something a little different to this, but you must have three conditions, and if you vary these conditions from those suggested be sure to check with your tutor before you start gathering your stimulus images.
b) How will you display your images? How long will you display each image for? And how will you control for this? (Suggestion: PowerPoint would be an excellent tool to use, as you can a) download images straight into PowerPoint, and b) use the slide show to control how long each image is displayed for). Note, when you collate your stimuli, you will want to store them in three separate files labelled Condition 1, Condition 2, Condition 3.
c) How will you assess body image state? You will need to develop items to assess body image states, so you will need to consider how best to measure this. You will need to consider issues such as: what sort of questions will best tap into how people currently feel about their appearance? What discrete aspects of appearance might you want to ask about? What type of response scale might be most appropriate? You will need to think about the type of data needed in order to conduct an ANOVA! You may also need to develop some distracter items. See Humphreys and Paxton (2004) for ideas on this aspect of your study.
d) In addition to administering your 5 body image items after each condition, what other items can you ask participants in order to give the study some face validity (that matches what you have told them in the Information Sheet)? You may wish to include items that assess the ?appeal of these images? (e.g., Humphreys & Paxton, 2004), or some other types of relevant distractor items.
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e) Consider the ethical implications of your research. Remember, you MUST be sure to gain informed written consent from participants before your study and to fully debrief them once they have completed the study. Note, your participants are not at any greater risk than they would face in everyday life; as you will be using images that they are likely to already be exposed to on a day-to-day basis, and the effects of exposure are short-lived, so participants are unlikely to become distressed by participating in this study, nor suffer any long term effects. That said, if you know that any of your potential participants do (or you suspect they may) have an issue with their appearance, have had an eating disorder or currently have an eating disorder, then do NOT ask them to participate in this study.
f) What will you tell participants about the study in the participant information sheet? You may not want to tell them the exact nature of the study but you need to avoid engaging in occluded research. You may state something similar to: ?we are examining how much people like certain types of advertising images and how these images make them think and feel.? Here, you have not stated explicitly that you are assessing state body image (which may induce a demand characteristic), but they are consenting to responding to how the images made them think and feel. See Humphreys and Paxton (2004) or Cash et al. (2005) for suggestions.
g) What order will you present the conditions to each participant in? Do you need to consider counter-balancing the order of presentation? How will you do this?
a) Carry out data collection (including ethical protocols) appropriate for your approved one-way design; and
b) Prepare you data in SPSS for performing a one-way ANOVA.
Each member of your group must collect data from 10 people (e.g. if you have 3 members in your group you must collect 10 each, 30 overall).
It is very important that the data are a) shared in the form of an SPSS data file (.sav), and b) are in the correct format for the analysis.
3 conditions:
Idealised images
Non-idealised images
Control Images
Depending on your design, you will have assessed state body image by asking a series of questions with a rating scale. Participants will have completed this three times, for each different level of your independent variable. The task is to convert these by-hand into an average score (i.e. a mean score) for each participant in each condition.
? Firstly, you will need to recode any reverse-worded body image items so that it is always the case that a high item score represents a more positive body image. For your ?reversed? items make a note on the participants answer sheet what the value for averaging should really be. For example, if you used a five-point scale (1-2-3-4-5) and they circled the number ?2? on a reverse-worded item then mark this that it should be counted as a ?4?. So, a ?1? should be counted as a ?5?, a ?2? should be counted as a ?4?, a ?3? as a ?3?, a ?4? as a ?2?, and a ?5? as a ?1?.
? Secondly calculate an average response for each participant in each condition (i.e. each level of the IV). For example, if you have five questions then simply: add up the responses for those five questions; and then divide by 5. As noted above, make sure that reverse-worded items are ?recoded? before adding them up. If you included ?filler? or ?distractor? questions you do not need to include responses to these. Mean ratings need only be calculated to two decimal places (e.g. 4.21 rather than 4.2135). You will need to do this for each condition.
? Finally, for each participant you should now have three ?scores?. An average response to the body image items, for each condition. Simply enter these into the correct columns in SPSS, using each row as a different participant:
LAYOUT OF THE PAPER:
Title:
" Investigating the effects of media exposure on body image attitudes using a one-way design"
Abstract:
The Abstract provides a clear summary of the study, its background (including one or two key
references where appropriate), its aims and hypotheses, methods and summary of main findings
Introduction:
this section will have all the research in it. research must be relevant to the title. other studies and researchers that may have looked at the same thing.
provides a clear rationale for the study, and is grounded in an accurate and
detailed overview of background literature.at the end of the section, there must be a hypothesis for the experiment.
Method:
this section must include 4 clear and concise headings:
Participnts
Design- what design was used
Materials and apparatus- what was used to conduct the experiment
Procedure- description of how the experiment was conducted.
Results:
A one-way repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to test......
must be brief and clear- what were the results.
Discussion:
In this section the results need to be discussed and analysed. Does it correlate with the hypothesis? link it to the research that was discussed in the backgroud section.
The Discussion relates the results to the issues covered in the introduction and provides a
discussion of theoretical and practical implications of the results. There is an in-depth interpretation
of results in the context of theoretical perspectives.
Conclusion:
Concluding the essay
Refrences:
Must be Harvard
Appendices:
I will do the majority of these.
The table used in SPSS output needs to be included.
Word limit- 1800-2000 words excluding title, references and appendices.
I will include a set of results that I have, however you're computer will need to be able to open SPSS files. If not, you will need a set of data to analyse the results.
