Psychological Research Methods
Students will complete a replication and extension of a previously published research study investigating the impact of responsible drinking messages on drinking behaviour.
The format of this assessment is a psychological research report.
Students will complete a replication and extension of a previously published research study investigating the impact of responsible drinking messages on drinking behaviour.
Background
Responsible drinking messages (RDM) are intended to educatedrinkers about the potential harms of excessive alcohol consumption and encourage drinkers to limit their use of alcohol.Such messages are included in industry marketing materials and public health media campaigns; however, it is unclear whether these messages are effective in changing drinking behaviours.
Moss et al. (2015) conducted a research study into the effectiveness of RDM. Psychology students at London South Bank University (LSBU) were recruited as participantsin exchange forcourse credits. Participants werebrought into the LSBU bar lab and given non-alcoholic beverages to consume, including non-alcoholic beer. In one condition, posters were displayed to encourage responsible drinking. In the control condition, posters did not mention alcohol or contain RDM. Researchers measured the volume of beverages consumed in each condition. The results showed that participants consumed more in the presence of the responsible drinking posters than in the presence of control posters. The findings indicate that responsible drinking campaigns are ineffective and may encourage drinking and cause harm. In the published paper, these results are interpreted in terms of the wider research literature on the harms caused by alcohol consumption and how these harms may be effectively reduced. Your Experts Are Ready - Hire Now!
Assessment Guidance
For this assessment, you will be asked to produce a psychological research report which replicates and extends Experiment 2 in Moss et al. (2015).
You will be expected todothe following:
1. You should write an introduction to this research which explains the reason why the research was conducted and why the findings are important for society. You should describe the previous evidence on the harms of excessive alcohol consumption andprevious research on RDM as a way of reducing harms.You should explain how this research study will help us to better understand the effectiveness of RDM in changing drinking behaviour.
2. You will stage a mock replication of the Moss (2015) experiment. You will go to the bar lab and be walked through the methods and procedures that were used in the original research study. In your report, you will be expected to describe the methods clearly and accurately. This should include a description of the participants, the materials, the research design and the procedure.
3. You will be asked toconsider the ethical implications of the research and how these issues were resolved.
4. You will be provided with a dataset that replicates the previous experiment but extends the finding to assess the effect of the RDM with a mixed-gender population. You will be expected to analyse these data to produce appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics that you will include in your report.
5. You should interpret the data with reference to the previouslypublished literature and explain the implications of the new findings. Also, you will be expected to consider the influence of other factors on the generalizability of your findings (e.g. Culture). Consider ways culture couldinfluence your results.
6. Finally, you should summarise the study to create an abstract to be placed at the start of the report.
The format of a psychology report will be explained to you in lectures and seminars. You must format your report appropriately using the following subheadings: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and provide a reference list. See the section below, ‘Assessment Support,' for examples of where you will be supported for this assessment.