The Science of Sleep: Learning the Fundamentals of Psychological Research
In my sophomore year at Wesleyan, I took a research methods course that taught students the fundamentals of conducting psychological research. As part of the course, students designed their own studies and wrote a mock proposal of the sort that typically gets submitted to an organization’s or university’s IRB. For my proposal, I outlined a study that would evaluate undergraduate students’ class schedules in conjunction with their sleep duration, quality, and chronotype to see if different class schedules had any significant effect on these previously mentioned indices of sleep.
Assessing Past Research
For the introduction section of the proposal, I complied and assessed past studies on this topic and noted any gaps in the existing research. Specifically, most of the prior research on students’ class and sleep schedules was correlational in design, so I addressed this limitation by using an experimental design in my study, thus ensuring I could make causational conclusions from the findings. I also included an objective way of measuring sleep quality and duration by proposing students wear an actigraph watch while sleeping rather than relying on more subjective measures of sleep markers (like surveys or questionnaires) that past research typically employed.
Recruiting Participants for My Study
In the methods section of the proposal, I described how I would conduct the study and recruit participants. Particularly in relation to recruitment, I created an example of a social media post that would be uploaded to my university’s sleep lab Instagram account to advertise the study and enlist participants. While constructing this post through Canva, I made sure to include all of the study’s relevant information (like its requirements and compensation) and used a bright pink background to capture students’ attention. In addition to the social media post, I also crafted an email that would be sent to students to inform them of the study and invite them to participate in it.
Though my study and proposal were all hypothetical, this class assignment gave me hands-on experience with the first step of the research process (i.e., drafting a comprehensive proposal). Additionally, my skills in evaluating prior psychological research were improved, as I had to find relevant past studies and critically analyze them to effectively address their limitations. Lastly, this assignment also allowed me to practice the art of advertising, as I had to design a creative way of reaching my target undergraduate audience and persuading them to participate in my study.
On the left is the social media post I designed, and on the right is the example email I wrote. In the social media post, I put important information in black lettering so that viewers could quickly identify it at first glance. In the email, I made sure to include all the relevant information for the study and explicit instructions on how individuals could contact the researchers if interested in participating. Both of these documents were included in my research proposal as a possible means of recruiting individuals. Click to view further.
