Fix Psychology research report

Task summary For this assignment, you are required to write a research report about the impact of pet ownership on loneliness in older adults (see background below). You will receive a complete statistical data set and focus group transcript to analyse (meaning you will not be collecting any data yourself) and you will answer the research question below. You should analyse the quantitative data using appropriate statistical techniques in Jamovi and the qualitative transcript using thematic analysis, and write a 3000-word report, using the report writing conventions of the APA Manual 7th Edition.

Background For many years researchers have been investigating loneliness with the aim of finding effective interventions or factors to reduce this loneliness. One factor that has been discussed has been the idea of pets as a source of companionship. Research has investigated this in various participant groups, however it may be particularly important in older adults. In fact, Age UK have reported that 1.4 million older people in the UK are often lonely, which highlights the importance of this research.

Your task is to use a mixed methods approach to answer the following research question: Is there a difference in loneliness in older adults with pets and older adults without pets, and how do the pet owners describe the impact of their pet on their loneliness? The first part of your research question will be answered by your quantitative analysis, and the second part will be answered be your qualitative analysis.

Resources The quantitative Jamovi dataset you will use will be provided to you on iLearn, along with the transcript of the qualitative focus group. You will use both of these for your report. 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 University of the Philippines Loneliness Assessment Scale (UPLAS; Tharayil, 2012) that was used for the Jamovi dataset.

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 effect of owning a pet on loneliness in older adults: A mixed-methods study”.

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 quantitative hypothesis. The hypothesis should be formed in line with the evidence discussed in the introduction.

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 should also outline your sampling technique (e.g., opportunity sampling). You should also discuss the sample that were interviewed during the focus group, 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.

You will describe the measure that participants completed in this section. In this case, participants completed the University of the Philippines Loneliness Assessment Scale (UPLAS; Tharayil, 2012), and so you would describe what the questionnaire is measuring with a citation to the original article (which you have been provided with). You would then explain how many questions it contained and how they are scored, and provide an overview of any reliability estimates. You should also provide an example question from the scale.

In this section you will also need to identify and outline a key question from the qualitative focus group, and 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. The participant would then complete the questionnaire or task, and then end with a 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. Your results section will be broken down into two sub- sections: Quantitative and Qualitative.

The quantitative section will start by outlining, 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.

In the qualitative section, you will describe the themes that were developed from the focus group. You will describe the theme and the name you have given it, what the theme entails, relevant quotes to support it and provide a brief analysis relating the quotes to the theme. You should do this for any main themes that you develop from the focus group transcript you have been given. Remember to follow APA 7 conventions by including quotes from your focus group transcript.

You are expected to include your Jamovi output and your coding and thematic map in your appendices.

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 quantitative findings support your hypothesis and how your qualitative findings help you answer your research question. You should also look to explain these findings in terms of other research that has been published. 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.