[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
In this video, I'll briefly outline key information about the research project that you will carry out as part of psych four one.

For one, I'll talk about what you will be expected to do, and I'll also talk about how it links into the assessment.

Now, the best way to learn about research is really to do research.

So you're already doing that through collecting sonar credits. You're already gaining hands on experience by participating in other people's research.

But in this part of the module, this aspect of the module, um, you will become the researcher.

Um, the topic of the research project is the following or the kind of the overall question, um, is mind wandering related to screen time?

The idea is that you will form groups, um,

and each group will refine this research question and decide what aspect of mind wandering to focus on as a group,

and how to measure that, and also what aspect of screen time to focus on and how to measure that.

So in the first few weeks, we worked with data from a questionnaire that measures mind wandering.

That's only an example of one questionnaire.

But that questionnaire distinguished between intentional mind wandering, unintentional mind wandering, and meta awareness of mind wandering.

So you might want to focus on one of these aspects, or on a more general measure of mind wandering.

And when it comes to screen time, that is a really broad umbrella term.

Um, and you can decide with your group what aspect of it you find most interesting in its relation to, to mind wandering.

So would that be kind of a general measure of all screen time use of of of people, or would it be how they,

how often they use their phone or what they use their phone for, how much time they spent on social media, what type of social media?

Or maybe you want to focus on something a bit different, like how much time people spend playing video games and how that relates to mind wandering.

So you as a group have choice in how you, um, refine this research question.

Okay. So then you also need to decide how you're going to measure each of these constructs.

Once you've decided what to focus on, um, and there is some constraints though it needs to be a questionnaire measure.

So in this module we will focus on using questionnaire to measure things and working with those types of data.

And it needs to be a question what we what I've called here a validated questionnaire.

And by that we mean a questionnaire that has been uh, has a peer reviewed publication attached to it.

And that means that the researchers have written a paper that has been accepted in a journal following peer review.

Um, and in that um paper they describe how they, why they develop the questionnaire, how they develop their items,

what they did to try out the items with different samples, and how well that all worked.

I will, um, provide some suggestions for questionnaires that you could use,

but if you find something in the literature that you find particularly interesting, then, um, then that is also an option.

And you can also find and you can also propose, um, a questionnaire that you might want to use.

Um, and finally, each group will collect some demographic data to describe the sample.

So by that we mean kind of the age of participants, um, a gender maybe, whether they are a student or not, those kind of things.

As a group you will then Pre-register your hypothesis, you will work together to build the study on a platform called gorilla,

and then you will work together to collect the data and you'll be aiming to collect about to collect responses from about 50 participants.

As a group. Now this provides a very rough timeline for for when things, um, will happen.

Um, so yeah, build your groups, start talking about refining that research question.

What does your group want to focus on then decide on methods on on the specific questionnaire measures

that your group would like to use to measure those constructs and pre-register your hypothesis.

In week six, we will then implement a study on gorilla.

In week seven, you will focus on collecting the data, um, and that all of those things are done as a group.

Then each of you will be supplied with a data file from.

With the responses that you that you collected as a group. Um, and you will analyse the results on as an individual.

You will each of you individually will write a report and submit that research report in week ten.

And that brings me to how it will be assessed. So we are currently in this module psych 4141.

And as we've talked about before, 35% of your grade for that module is, um, related to your performance on, on writing the research report.

So that is this, this research report will come out of the research project that I just described.

So who can participate in your study?

So, um, anybody over the age of 16 years who doesn't have any vulnerabilities and, and are capable of providing consent themselves.

Um. By law.

People over the age of 16 are allowed to consent themselves to to to participate in research studies by themselves if it is a low risk study.

So. And by that we mean in the study they wouldn't encounter anything that's very

different from the types of things that they might encounter in daily life.

So, um, last week you already started to register your groups.

Um, if you all you could ask to be allocated to a group if you don't know who to go in a group with.

Um, if you haven't done that yet, please do that as soon as possible.

And keep in mind that your group needs to consist of students from your timetabled lab session.

Then start reading about mind wandering and screen time. I will also post some kind of suggested readings for that, but you can of course go off.

Have a search the literature by yourself as well and start discussing with your group how you want to refine the research question,

and how you want to measure the constructs that you want to focus on.

So a few things. If you don't know anybody yet who would want to get into a group with don't worry.

Um you can. So there was a Moodle announcement about registering groups.

And in the on that same form you can also say please allocate me to a group.

So the first question is about do you want to register a group or um, do you want to be allocated to a group.

So you can choose either. That's fine. Um, how do you decide what to focus on.

Might be a question that you have been thinking about. It is really about reading a bit about those concepts.

So screen time and mind wandering and figuring out what you find interesting.

What do you what do you think? Would would be of interest in that context.

And then you have to, of course, discuss that with other members of your group and, and, and come to an agreement there.

Um, how do you decide how to measure it?

As I mentioned, it has to be a questionnaire measure or a question that can be asked that you can ask participants through a questionnaire study.

So if you want to ask people, um, how long they were on their phones for yesterday, that that is also a question that you could add.

Um, and then I mentioned, as I mentioned, you can use validated measures,

validated questionnaire measures that have been published about in the literature, and I will provide some suggested readings on those as well.

And things for you to, to, to look at and to potentially choose from.

If you find a questionnaire written about in the literature that you think is suitable, then you can also suggest that and that's it for that.

That's it for now. Thank you.