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Running head: MILESTONE FOUR EXEMPLAR

Milestone Four Exemplar

Student Name

Research Methods in Psychology 1: Southern New Hampshire University

Dr. X

MILESTONE FOUR EXEMPLAR 2

Method

Participants

Participants will be Southern New Hampshire graduate students from PSY 510

and PSY 520. Participants will be both male and females and have varying ages

potentially 22 years of age to 45 years of age. It is expected that there will be 7 to 10

participants. Participants will need to use a computer or smartphone in order to take the

survey, and the data will be evaluated in SPSS.

Procedure

Participants will be asked to read the introduction prior to partaking in the survey

research part of the introduction will be the informed consent. Once they have completed

reading the introduction, they will be asked to first demographic questions. One of the

demographic questions will ask what field of work they are currently a part of, if any.

Next they will be asked to complete a survey about their opinions on cell phone usage

and quality of life. They will be asked to read a hypothetical scenario. Then they will fill

out a customer satisfaction survey based on the hypothetical scenario. They will then

read the second scenario and complete the customer service satisfaction based on the

second scenario. The last aspect will be debriefing. A more detailed account of what each

survey aspect includes follows, as well as information on ethics.

Materials

All materials will be presented to participants using Qualtrics, an online

survey program. It is utilized by Southern New Hampshire University for research

purposes.

MILESTONE FOUR EXEMPLAR 3

Demographics. A demographics survey will ask about gender, age, current work

status, and current field of work.

Quality of life impact of the cell phone. A survey will be administered to

measure the perceptions of cell phone usage on quality of life. The survey measures

multiple areas of life including leisure, education, health and safety, and work.

Responses to the survey will be collected using a five-point Likert scale. This is an

important survey to use because it will represent the perceptions that participants have

overall about cell phones (Sirgy, Kamra, & Tidwell, 2007).

Scenario. Participants will read a scenario indicating that they are a customer in

a local convenience store. It will read along the lines of, “There is one employee at the

cash register and you are the only customer in the store. When you approach the counter

with your items you notice that the employee has been on their cell phone. You check

out and leave the store.” They will then be asked to complete a customer satisfaction

survey based on the scenario.

After completing a customer satisfaction survey, the participant will be

asked to read another scenario. This scenario will have no mention of a cell phone,

but all other aspects will be the same. Then they will be asked to complete a

customer satisfaction survey again.

Customer service satisfaction. A customer service satisfaction survey will be

the last portion of the survey. This will ask about the participant’s overall customer

satisfaction experience. This will also be measured on a five-point Likert scale. The

questions will focus on the overall experience and how they perceived the employee.

There will also be customer satisfaction questions related to the presence of technology.

MILESTONE FOUR EXEMPLAR 4

Ethical Concerns

In order to avoid basic ethical issues, informed consent and debriefing will

occur for each participant. A concern with conducting this research is that the

participant pool is going to be very small. This is a concern with reporting because it

would not be appropriate if there is statistical significance for any real conclusions to

be drawn other than the conclusion to conduct more research. There is also a small

ethical concern about asking certain demographic questions; this can be remedied by

having an option to decline to answer any of the questions. This is a particular

concern because the participants are in some capacity peers; even if they are from a

differing class, they attend the same university. Privacy needs to be of the utmost

concern.

Data Analysis Plan

Once data collection is completed, the data will be coded as necessary and then

IMB SPSS will be used analyze the results. The participants will have a customer

service with cell phone scenario, customer service without cell phones scenario score.

There will be dependent samples t-tests run to analyze the data collected. Descriptive

statistics will be reported; averages and standard deviations will be presented. If the

occupations will be too revealing for the participants’ privacy, they will be omitted.

There is potential to have graphs, but they will only be used if it is helpful for describing

the outcomes from the survey. The range and average will be examined to determine if

there are any outliers in the sample. P-values and standard deviations will be reported, as

will Pearson’s R.

MILESTONE FOUR EXEMPLAR 5

The most relevant statistics are going to be related to the customer service

satisfaction surveys. There will also be dependent t-tests conducted between the

quality of life survey and each customer service satisfaction survey. These results will

show if there is a difference between the perceived quality of life due to cell phones

and the presence of cell phones in a customer service setting. A correlation will be

conducted for each customer service survey and quality of life survey.

Results

The anticipated results are statistically significant. The results will indicate that

there is a significant difference between cell phone presence and non-cell phone

presence. The results indicate that customer service outcomes are higher when cell

phones are not involved. There will also be statistical tests assessed between the

perceived cell phone usage on quality of life and the customer service satisfaction

surveys. Is there a difference between the two scenarios and the perceived customer

service outcome? The cell phone survey is going to be most relevant in reporting if

participants have vastly different perceptions of cell phone use and how that may affect

the customer service results from each scenario.

The results will be presented as factual opinion and not as statements of

cause. The results will be carefully interpreted in order to assure that there are no

ethical issues with misleading anyone with the results.

The anticipated limitations will be the sample size. Only being able to sample

from Southern New Hampshire University students leaves for a very small

anticipated sample population. With a limited population, it is likely that there will

not be a normal distribution, making it difficult to generalize to a larger population.

MILESTONE FOUR EXEMPLAR 6

References

Sirgy, M. J., Lee, D., Kamra, K., & Tidwell, J. (2007). Developing and validating a

measure of consumer well-being in relation to cell phone use. American

Journal of Dance Therapy, 29(2), 95-123.