The Effect of Social Media on Depression

 Hey this is what the essay needs to include. Social Psychology Written Assignment – Final Research Proposal Instructions Based on our personal experiences, we often end up asking questions about people’s thoughts and behaviours. Why did you behave this way? Why does your friend act like this? What influenced your decision making process? What is the impact of this daily occurrence on your attitudes? Does this person like me? What is their first impression of me? We can often use personal incidents, thoughts, or behavior as inspiration that can guide social psychological research questions. Social psychologists are empiricists – they rely on experiments, surveys, and other forms of quantitative and qualitative data to inform and test their theories. In this course, we take a scientific approach to social psychology. Science, by its nature, evolves as scientists test and learn the limits of their theories with new research. As such, it is as important to know how to do social psychology as it is to know what social psychologists currently know. Based on what you have learned in the course, you will develop a research proposal to empirically test a social psychological phenomenon. You will formulate a research question, articulate a hypothesis based on social psychological theory, describe methods to test your hypothesis, and describe your predicted outcomes. Paper Organization: 1. Introduction: [Approx. 1-2 pages] • Opening statement: Broadly, explain the issue you are examining and why it is significant. State the research problem. Grab the reader’s attention! • Background: Include a brief background and literature review. The literature review provides a context and rationale for the hypothesis under investigation. Define the basic concept you are interested in. You must include additional background information from at least relevant 3 empirical academic journal articles. Try to paraphrase, rather than quoting directly from any source. Document the source by listing the authors names and year of publication in parentheses, according to APA style. • Clearly and concisely specify the research question you are examining. • State your hypotheses. What do you think will happen? This hypothesis should clearly state what you think will happen, and should specify your independent and dependent variables. 2. Method and Design: A description of how you would go about collecting data and testing the question you are examining. [Approx. 3-4 pages] • Participants: Who would you test and why? Describe the sample you would test and explain why you have chosen this sample. Include age, language background, socio-economic information, and other demographic information, but only if relevant to the design. Are there any participants you would exclude? Why/why not? • Materials: What are you going to measure/assess, and how are you going to measure and assess it? Include a description of the equipment or materials used in the research. If researchers developed their own stimulus material, they must describe how it was done. If researchers use existing materials, they must document the source. When surveys or tests are used as outcome measures, each must be described briefly with an appropriate citation. • Procedure: What are the participants in the study going to do? This should be a step-by-step description of what participants in your study are going to do. Report the participants’ instructions and all of the experimental manipulations. 3. Expected Results and Discussion: What specific results would confirm your hypothesis. Clearly specify, how could your hypothesis be confirmed and disconfirmed by your data. Indicate what the limitations of this research design are. Discuss, in general, how your proposed research would inform social psychology and benefit the field. In other words, why should someone care about this study? [Approx. 1-1.5 pages] Paper Requirements: The written assignment must be typed, double-spaced, in 12-point Times New Roman font, and maximum 8 pages in length with 1-inch margins (adhering to APA guidelines). This does not include your title page and reference section. The tone should be formal and non-colloquial (i.e., non-conversational). The use of additional resources generally strengthens a paper. Accordingly, you are to cite at least 3 additional resources (i.e., books, peer-reviewed journal articles). Note that Wikipedia is not an appropriate source of information to cite in your paper. Any sources of information that are referred to in your paper should be referenced according to the guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association (i.e., APA).