Optimism Research Project

Students will read a scholarly journal article and a non-scholarly article about a specific topic that will be provided in the course. Items to consider when reading the articles include noting the issue, methodology, and results.

Students will next collect data by requesting 30 people to complete a questionnaire provided in the course. Fifteen of the questionnaires must be completed by men and 15 of the questionnaires must be completed by women.

Students must enter the data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that is provided in the course, and then analyze the data. Students will read the data set instructions that are located in the course for additional details about what statistical procedures to conduct. Students must save a completed Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, including calculations and graphs to submit with the final paper.

Students will develop an APA formatted, written report that contains the following sections:

Introduction: Briefly summarize the concept (approximately 300 words)
Refer to the scholarly, peer-reviewed article and the non-scholarly article to discuss the concept
Method: Briefly describe the following with regard to data collection (make a separate heading for each subheading below):
Participants
Discuss any important demographic information such as age of participants etc.
Materials
Describe the questionnaire—number of items and the response set (i.e. The Likert scale options)
Procedure
Describe how the data was collected –how did you find participants and ask them to participate
Results: Briefly summarize the statistical findings from the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and address the questions in the data set instructions about the data. This section will include a frequency polygon and content from the textbook as students answer questions about the results. Refer to the data set instructions for guidelines on what to include in the results section.
Discussion: Briefly summarize the interpretation of the findings (i.e. What do the findings mean in relation to the concept) (approximately 300 words)
References: Include APA references for at least 3 sources used in this report (i.e. Journal article, non-scholarly article, and textbook)