PSY4008 Introduction to Research Methods-Statistics Assignment Help

Assignment Task

This assessment is worth 100% of the total marks for the module.

Task summary

For this assignment, you are required to write a research report about social media and the effect it has on people's self-esteem (see background below). You will receive a complete data set and interview transcripts to analyse and you will answer the research questions below. You should analyse the data using appropriate statistical techniques in Jamovi and write a 3000-word report, using the report writing conventions of the APA.

Background

Social Media and Self-Esteem: The Impact on People’s Perception of their Body Image

Social media networks can enhance social connections and provide people with opportunities for perceived social support. However, these networks have also become a place where instead of people posting about their genuine lives, social media influencers and others, use it as a platform to portray images of both a perfect life and body. People, when seeing that others appear to be experiencing more positive outcomes, may consequently feel worse about themselves. In turn, this can have an impact on their self-esteem and the way they perceive their bodies.

Self-esteem relates to peoples positive or negative self-attitudes and is intermeshed with their sense of self-worth. Within the online setting, individuals strive to present themselves positively and it is likely that people with low self-esteem will be eager to engage in online activities that may raise their self-esteem levels. Yet, research has indicated that social media use is associated with negative outcomes such as envy, diminished self-esteem, body shame and social isolation. These negative effects can be especially pronounced for individuals who embody low self-esteem. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate whether refraining from social media use, will increase individuals’ self-esteem.

Your task, therefore, is to answer the following research question: “Is there a difference between people’s self-esteem levels when they use social media networks compared to when they refrain and how is their self-esteem impacted from social media usage?”

The data you will be provided with has been compiled to reflect real world data, with the qualitative interviews based on conducted narratives. As a starting point you are provided with two journal papers on the module assessment page: Exploring the Role of Social Media Use Motives, Psychological Well-Being, Self-Esteem and Affect in Problematic Social Media Use (Schivinski et al., 2020) and All my online-friends are better than me – three studies about ability-based comparative social media use, self-esteem and depressive tendencies (Ozimek & Bierhoff, 2019).

The Report Structure

Title

Your title should reflect what the experiment is investigating. More specifically, it should give an indication of what your study looked to test and discover. For example: “The Impact of Social Media use on Self-Esteem: A Mixed-Methods Study”.

Introduction

In this section, you should very briefly introduce the topic area and explain why it is an important area to conduct research into. You should then go on to discuss the methods and findings of 2-3 existing research studies from the same topic area. Next, you should explain how your own study builds upon (generates new knowledge or replicates), the previous studies that you discussed earlier, with a summary of what you are trying to discover. Finally, you should state the aim of your study, the research question, which has been provided for you and the quantitative hypothesis. The hypothesis should be formed in line with the evidence discussed in the introduction.

(20 marks)

(LOs: 4)

Method

In this section, you should include enough information to allow someone reading your report to conduct a full and accurate replication of your study. You should also outline the most important ethical and validity issues that are relevant to your study. This section should be written in the past tense (as though you have already completed the study). Please use the following subsections within your methods section:

Participants

This section should cover how many participants you collected data from, what the range, mean and standard deviation of their ages were, what the gender distribution of the sample was and what population you sampled from (you can make these up, as you do not have to collect any data for this assignment). You should also outline your sampling technique (e.g., opportunity sampling). You should also discuss the sample that were interviewed, including a brief description of how they were recruited, demographics and any further ethical considerations.

Design

Begin by stating the overall design used and the mixed method framework, then briefly explain the quantitative design, for example, independent groups, repeated measures or correlational. Next, state the variables, including how they were operationalised. You should then briefly state the qualitative analysis method used.

Materials

This will apply to the scales or tasks used in your study. This section is perhaps the most important for being as specific as possible as you are providing the details an independent researcher would require to replicate your study.

If you are describing the measures participants completed, you would provide an overview of what they contained. For example, if participants completed a validated questionnaire, you would describe what the questionnaire measures with a citation to the original article, explain how many questions it contained and how they are scored, and provide an overview of any reliability estimates. If it is a validated questionnaire, you can provide an example question since you cited the original source. You will also need to identify and outline the key questions from the qualitative interviews as well as mention other materials, such as recording devices.

Procedure

This section provides a chronological account of what the participants did at each stage of the study and outline the ethical processes you followed. In almost all studies, the procedure begins with responding to the invitation to participate, followed by reading the participant information sheet and providing informed consent, ending on debriefing. You will also need to address the qualitative element, including how participants contacted the researcher and the relevant ethical considerations.

If you had to deal with any ethical issues within the study, you would discuss them here and explain how you minimised any risks to participants or yourself. Note that since this is fabricated data you will need to explore ethical concerns that you would have expected to face, were this being conducted properly, as though you did.

Results

This section should include all the important information to answer your research question and hypothesis. It should firstly describe, in full sentences, the methods you used to check the assumptions for the statistical tests that you planned to use. It should describe if any outliers were removed from the data set, and if any assumptions were violated. It should then include a properly APA formatted inferential statement for your parametric test to answer your hypothesis, although your hypothesis is not repeated here.

You should then go on to describe the themes that were uncovered from the interviews, describe the theme and the name you have given it, what the theme entails, a relevant quote to support it and provide a brief analysis relating the quote to the theme. You should do this for any main themes that you uncover from the interviews that are available to you. Remember to follow APA 7 conventions by including quotes from your interviews.

Discussion

This section should start with a brief review of your research question and hypothesis. You should explain the findings of your study in plain language without the use of statistics, and their real-world implications. You should also look to explain these findings in terms of other research that has been published, using approximately 2-3 research papers to explain your findings. You should then go on to discuss any limitations that the current study has, again using research to compliment these limitations, and offer suggestions as to how they might be improved upon. You should end this section with a suggestion for future research, based on observations you have seen in the research, as well as further ideas that the research could incorporate. Finally, you should offer a conclusion with no new information, that sums up the goal of the study and its overall outcome.

The suggested word allocation of the report is:

1. Introduction 1000 words
2. Method 350 words
3. Results 650 words
4. Discussion 1000 words

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