Empirical Research Report

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including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions. Template: V5

PSY4008

Introduction to Research Methods

Empirical Research Report

Date for Submission: Please refer to the timetable on ilearn

(The submission portal on ilearn will close at 14:00 UK time on the date of submission)

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Assignment Brief.

As part of the formal assessment for the programme, you are required to submit an

Empirical Research Report assignment. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full

details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and

submitting assignments.

Learning Outcomes:

After completing the module, you should be able to:

1. Demonstrate a systematic knowledge of different research paradigms, including both

quantitative and qualitative data analysis.

2. Recognise ethical, theoretical, and methodological strengths and limitations in conducting

psychological research.

3. Communicate psychological findings using numerical and textual data via an appropriately

formatted research report.

Graduate attributes

4. Discipline Expertise: Knowledge and understanding of chosen field – Students will

possess a range of skills to operate within this sector, have a keen awareness of current

developments in working practice and be well positioned to respond to change.

All learning outcomes must be met to pass the module.

Through completing this assessment, you will have enhanced key professional development

skills including: information seeking, summarising research, performing appropriate data

analysis, interpreting data, using data and statistics to inform evidenced conclusion, and

presenting coherent, reasoned arguments.

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Guidance

Your assignment should include: a title page containing your student number, the module

name, the submission deadline and the exact word count of your submitted document; the

appendices if relevant; and a reference list in (see referencing section for more information).

You should address all the elements of the assignment task listed below. Please note that

tutors will use the assessment criteria set out below in assessing your work.

You must not include your name in your submission because Arden University operates

anonymous marking, which means that markers should not be aware of the identity of the

student. However, please do not forget to include your STU number.

Maximum word count: 2500 words

Please refer to the full word count policy which can be found in the Student Policies section

here: Arden University | Regulatory Framework.

Please note the following: Students are required to indicate the exact word count on the title page of the assessment. The word count includes everything in the main body of the assessment (including in text

citations and references). The word count excludes numerical data in tables, figures,

diagrams, footnotes, reference list and appendices. ALL other printed words ARE

included in the word count.

Please note that exceeding the word count by over 10% will result in a 10-percentage point

deduction.

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Assignment Task

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

(2500 Words)

(100 Marks)

(LOs: 1, 2, 3, & 4)

Task summary

For this assessment, you are required to write an Empirical Research Report about Sleep

Quality and Academic Performance (see background below). You will be writing a quantitative

report with an additional section considering how the research could be furthered with a

qualitative research approach. You will write a 2500-word report using the report writing

conventions of the APA manual 7th Edition – you will find guidance on writing research reports

on the My Assessment tab.

Background

In today’s society, we are trying to fit more and more into the 24-hour day, and this might

mean we prioritise waking life over sleep. However, recent evidence continues to suggest

that sleep is essential for our cognitive functions, such as memory consolidation. Sometimes,

we may not get the recommended amount of sleep, or we might sleep during the day rather

than at night. Sleep quality is another important consideration, and there has been an

increasing interest in how sleep quality may influence, or be related to, students' academic

performance. Within this report, you will focus on whether there is a relationship between

sleep quality and academic performance.

Your task is to analyse the provided data and write a quantitative research report answering

the following research question: Is there a relationship between Sleep Quality and Academic

Performance? Following your report, you will consider how you could extend this research

with a qualitative study. It’s important to note that you will not actually run a study or collect

data in this module as you do not have ethical approval to do so.

Resources

As you will be provided data, you will not be collecting any data yourselves. The data provided

has been compiled to reflect real world data. You will write about this data as though you

collected it yourself. Imagine that you are the researcher and invited participants to take part

in your research – what sampling method might you choose? You will include details about

your sampling method and participants in your methods section of your report.

The quantitative dataset you will analyse will be provided to you on iLearn as an Excel file.

You will need to input this data into Jamovi for your statistical analysis. You have been

provided with a supporting information document detailing what this data represents. In your

assessment resources, you will also find two papers to help you start your literature review –

you can use these papers alongside other papers within your report. You will also be provided

with a paper discussing the Jenkins Sleep Scale-4 (Tibubos et al., 2020). Throughout the

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

module, you will receive guidance on writing a research report and conducting appropriate

analyses.

Formatting and Style of Report

Communication, formatting, & referencing

Your research report should be written in accordance with APA 7th edition. It should have a

formal and scientific tone, and claims should be supported with citations and evidence.

Appropriate sources should be used throughout, with a focus on peer-reviewed academic

sources – you will be provided with a couple of sources that you can use to build upon.

(10 marks)

(LOs: 3)

The Report Structure

Title

Your title should reflect what the study is investigating. More specifically, it should give an

indication of what your study looked to test and discover. For example: Investigating the

Relationship Between Sleep Quality and Academic Performance.

Introduction

In this section, you should very briefly introduce the topic area and then go on to discuss

existing research studies from the same topic area, while highlighting the importance of the

research topic. You should then 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 hypothesis. The hypothesis should be

formed in line with the evidence discussed in the introduction.

(18 marks)

(LOs: 1 & 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 issues that are relevant to your study. This section should be written in the

past tense (as though you have already completed the study). Note: as you have been given

a dataset, you will write this section as if you had collected the data you’ve been provided

with.

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

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, and what the gender distribution of the

sample was. You should also outline your sampling technique (e.g., opportunity sampling)

and recruitment method – you can decide your own appropriate technique and method.

Design

Begin by stating which experimental design was used; for example, independent groups

(between-subjects), repeated measures (within-subjects), or correlation. Next, state the

variables, including how they were operationalised.

Materials

In this section, you will outline the scales or tasks used within your study to create your

dataset. This section is perhaps the most important for being as specific as possible, because

you are providing the details an independent researcher would require to replicate your study.

If a questionnaire was used, you would describe what the questionnaire is measuring with a

citation to the original article. You would explain how many questions it contained and how

they are scored, alongside any reliability estimates. You would also include an example

question from the questionnaire.

If a task was used, you would describe what the task measures, what the participants would

see, and how participants would respond. You would also explain how it is scored. See the

‘Supporting Information’ document for more details on whether a task was used for your

dataset.

Procedure

This section provides a chronological account of what the participants did at each stage of

the study and outlines the ethical processes 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. The participant would then complete the

questionnaire or task, and then end with a debriefing. In this section you would also highlight

any specific ethical considerations taken into account when running the study.

(18 marks)

(LOs: 1 & 2)

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Results

This section should include all the important information to answer your research question.

It will start by outlining the descriptive statistics, and then in full sentences, the methods used

to check the parametric 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 chosen

statistical test to answer your hypothesis, although your hypothesis is not repeated here.

Note: you must include your Jamovi output in your appendices.

(18 marks)

(LOs: 1 & 3)

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

outline whether the findings support your hypothesis. You should also look to explain these

findings in terms of other research that has been published. You should then go on to briefly

discuss any limitations (weaknesses) and implications (how the research will be useful) of the

current study. Finally, you should offer a conclusion, with no new information, which sums up

the goal of the study and its overall outcome.

(18 marks)

(LOs: 1, 2, & 4)

Qualitative Future Research

In a standard research report, ideas for future research would be briefly mentioned in the

discussion. However, for this assessment you will use this additional section to consider how

you could design a qualitative study to extend the current research. Based on the topic of

your report, develop a qualitative research question that follows on from the current research

and outline how you would test this question. It’s important to ensure that this uses a

qualitative approach and is relevant to the current research topic.

This section should start by explaining how a qualitative approach could provide insights and

expand on sleep quality and academic performance beyond the current quantitative research.

You should outline your research question and the methodology you would use (for example,

focus groups, interviews, observations, etc), justifying the use of this particular method. This

section should also contain information about example questions that you would ask

participants. You should then outline and justify the qualitative analysis method that you

would use. It should end by explaining any additional ethical considerations that may need to

be taken into account. For this section you should use the future tense (i.e., ‘The research

would use…’) as you are writing about something that has not yet happened.

(18 marks)

(LOs: 1 & 2)

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materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

After these sections, your reference list would begin on a new page, followed by your

appendices, which would also begin on a new page.

The suggested word allocation of the report is:

a. Introduction: 700 words

b. Method: 300 words

c. Results: 300 words

d. Discussion: 700 words

e. Qualitative Future Research: 500 words

This is only a guideline and does not need to be strictly adhered to, but your report should

not exceed 2500 words in total (excluding reference list and appendices). You are allowed

10% of your word total, before actions are taken in line with current policies on failing to meet

the word count. Please see the latest guidelines for this under document QA87 Word Count

Policy.

This module is marked using the Arden University Categorical Marking Criteria

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Arden University © reserves all rights of copyright and all other intellectual property rights in the learning materials and this publication. No part of any of the learning

materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Formative Feedback

You have the opportunity to submit a bullet-pointed plan of your research report and your complete results section to receive formative feedback. You will be able to submit up to 750 words of a bullet-pointed plan for your introduction, methods, discussion, and qualitative future research sections. You will also be able to submit your results section up to 300 words.

The feedback is designed to help you develop areas of your work and it helps you develop your skills as an independent learner.    

If you are a distance learning student, you should submit your work via

Turnitin. Please check your iLearn module pages/forum for the formative feedback

deadline and submission link.

If you are a blended learning student, your tutor will give you a deadline for formative

feedback and further details.  If you have a confirmed extension to your summative

(final submission) deadline, please contact your lecturer for information on extensions

to the formative feedback deadline. 

  

Formative feedback will not be given to work submitted after the published date or the date specified by your tutor (if a blended learning student). 

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Arden University © reserves all rights of copyright and all other intellectual property rights in the learning materials and this publication. No part of any of the learning

materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Referencing Guidelines

Guidelines for students studying BSc (Hons) Psychology and BSc (Hons) Psychology

with Counselling:

You MUST underpin your analysis and evaluation of the key issues with appropriate and wide-

ranging academic research and ensure this is referenced using the APA system(s).

Follow this link to find the referencing guides for your subject: Arden Library

Guidelines for students studying

BA (Hons) Criminology and Psychology

BA (Hons) Criminology and Psychology with Foundation Pathways

BA (Hons) Criminology and Law

BA (Hons) Criminology and Law with Foundation Pathways

BA (Hons) Criminology and Sociology

BA (Hons) HRM and Psychology

BA (Hons) Psychology and Sociology

BA (Hons) Psychology and Sociology with Foundation Pathways

BA (Hons) Psychology and Human Resource Management

BA (Hons) Psychology and Law

BA (Hons) Social Science

You MUST underpin your analysis and evaluation of the key issues with appropriate and wide-

ranging academic research and ensure this is referenced using the AU Harvard system(s).

Follow this link to find the referencing guides for your subject: Arden Library

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Arden University © reserves all rights of copyright and all other intellectual property rights in the learning materials and this publication. No part of any of the learning

materials or this publication may be reproduced, shared (including in private social media groups), stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means,

including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the

use and distribution of programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Submission Guidance

Assignments submitted late will not be accepted and will be marked as a 0% fail.

Your assessment can be submitted as a single Word (MS Word) or PDF file, or, as multiple

files.

If you chose to submit multiple files, you must name each document as the question/part you

are answering along with your student number ie Q1 Section A STUXXXX. If you wish to

overwrite your submission or one of your submissions, you must ensure that your new

submission is named exactly the same as the previous in order for the system to

overwrite it.

You must ensure that the submitted assignment is all your own work and that all sources

used are correctly attributed. Penalties apply to assignments which show evidence of

academic unfair practice. (See the Student Handbook which is available on the A-Z key

information on iLearn.)

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stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means, including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the use and distribution of

programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Assessment Criteria (Learning objectives covered – all.

Level 4 is the first stage on the student journey into undergraduate study. At Level 4 students will be developing their knowledge and understanding of the discipline and will be expected to demonstrate some of those skills and competences. Student are expected to express their ideas clearly and to structure and develop academic arguments in their work. Students will begin to apply the theory which underpins the subject and will start to explore how this relates to other areas of their learning and any ethical considerations as appropriate. Students will begin to develop self-awareness of their own academic and professional development.

Grade Mark Bands

Generic Assessment Criteria

First (1)

80%+ Outstanding performance which demonstrates the ability to analyse the subject area and to confidently apply theory whilst showing awareness of any relevant ethical considerations. The work shows an outstanding level of competence and confidence in managing appropriate sources and materials, initiative and excellent academic writing skills and professional skills (where appropriate). The work shows originality of thought.

70-79%

Excellent performance which demonstrates the ability to analyse the subject and apply theory whilst showing some awareness of any relevant ethical considerations. The work shows a high level of competence in managing sources and materials, initiative and excellent academic writing skills and professional skills (where appropriate). The work shows originality of thought.

Upper second (2:1)

60-69%

Very good performance which demonstrates the ability to analyse the subject and apply some theory. The work shows a very good level of competence in managing sources and materials and some initiative. Academic writing skills are very good, and expression remains accurate overall. Very good professional skills (where appropriate). The work shows some original thought.

Lower second (2:2)

50-59%

A good performance which begins to analyse the subject and apply some underpinning theory. The work shows a sound level of competence in managing basic sources and materials. Academic writing skills are good, and expression remains accurate overall although the piece may lack structure. Good professional skills (where appropriate). The work lacks some original thought.

Third (3)

40-49%

Satisfactory level of performance in which there are some omissions in understanding the subject, its underpinning theory, and ethical considerations. The work shows a satisfactory use of sources and materials. Academic writing skills are limited and there are some errors in expression and the work may lack structure overall. There are some difficulties in developing professional skills (where appropriate). The work lacks original thought and is largely imitative.

Marginal Fail

30-39%

Limited performance in which there are omissions in understanding the subject, its underpinning theory, and ethical considerations. The work shows a limited use of sources and materials. Academic writing skills are weak and there are errors in expression and the work may lack structure overall. There are difficulties in developing professional skills (where appropriate). The work lacks original thought and is largely imitative.

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stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or means, including without limitation electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Arden University. To find out more about the use and distribution of

programme materials please see the Arden Student Terms and Conditions.

Clear fail

29% and Below

A poor performance in which there are substantial gaps in knowledge and understanding, underpinning theory and ethical considerations. The work shows little evidence in the use of appropriate sources and materials. Academic writing skills are very weak and there are numerous errors in expression. The work lacks structure overall. Professional skills (where appropriate) are not developed. The work is imitative.