PSY 395 Lab Report 1 – Naturalistic Observation
Due: Must be uploaded to Angel by the start of Lab during the week of September 23rd
Overview:
The purpose of this lab is to conduct a naturalistic observation study. To accomplish this study,
you will work in a research team of three to four students assigned by your TA. Your team will
develop a hypothesis and design an observational study to test it. It is expected that each team
member will spend one hour outside of class time making observations. After completing your
observations, you will need to meet with your team members to compile the data and conduct the
statistical analyses. You will have part of the next laboratory session to conduct the analyses.
Each individual team member must turn in an independent report. Respond to the questions
below and write up a summary of your results following APA format (i.e., write a results
section). LATE REPORTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED!!!
Before Collecting Data:
You will need to spend a significant amount of time before collecting data to develop a research
hypothesis and design your study. If you do not spend enough time on this part of the study, you
may end up wasting your time collecting data that is uninterpretable. The first, and perhaps most
important, part of your preparation will be deciding on a research topic. Below are some
guidelines that your group should consider when deciding on a research question.
 You should first come up with a testable hypothesis that your group thinks is worth
investigating (e.g., We believe that students will study more effectively in the afternoon
than in the morning because they are more alert in the afternoon). In doing so, you should
select a naturally occurring independent variable (IV) with two levels (e.g., time of day)
that you think might lead to a difference in the behavior you will observe (e.g., studying).
 Next your group will have to decide how to operationally define your terms and generate
a research hypothesis that can be evaluated by observation (e.g. how will you
operationally define afternoon and morning, and how will you operationally define
“effective studying” so that it can be measured observationally.) When operationally
defining your dependent variable (DV), be sure to select a specific behavior that you
believe should be influenced by the IV and is observable.
 You can observe only public behavior, that is, a setting that is clearly in the public
domain.
 Then check with your TA about your research team’s idea. Once they give the thumbs
up about your topic and defined variables you should consider the following issues when
implementing your design.
o Reactivity: How will you assure that your observations are non-reactive?
o Situation Sampling: How will you decided where to make your observations?
Situation sampling is usually preferred because sampling different situations can
increase the generalizability of your findings. However, you may need to select
only a single location for practical reasons.
o Time Sampling: When will you make your observations? Remember, your team
should try to complete the assignment in no more than four hours of observation
so it is important that the times you select will yield as many observations as
possible of the behavior you want to study.
o Participant Sampling: How will you select those whom you will observe? If you
are observing in a setting in which there are more people eligible for your study
than you can tally at once, how will you decide whom to include?
o Data Reduction: Before beginning your observations, decide what kind of DV you
are using (e.g., frequency, duration, ratings) and ask yourself how you will be able
to summarize your results (e.g., what statistical tests you will use).
o Reliability: Before beginning your observations, decide what factors in your study
lead you to believe your observations will be reliable. You will need to obtain
reliability with another member of your team on a least a portion of observations
(10-25%). How will you calculate reliability?
Collecting Data:
Each student in your team should spend at least 1 hour outside of class making observations.
Since this is an observational study and observations can be very subjective, for some portion of
your observations, you and another team member (or, more!) should observe the same situation
at the same time and record the same behavior. This should be done independently (don’t code
together – this defeats the purpose). So, for example, if you are looking at studying behavior in
the library, two team members should observe at the same time from different sides of the room
to determine if you are both observing the same behavior. Then you will report the interobserver
reliability.
Analyzing Your Data:
You will combine your data with your team members’ data. You should reduce your data using
the appropriate descriptive statistics. I also recommend graphing your data or putting it into
tables first to get a good idea of what it looks like. Finally, you should analyze your data using
the appropriate statistical test. After you do this, you will want to interpret your data. It is not
expected that you will achieve a clearly interpretable, significant result. However, this step
should help you see how this process works and give you an idea of what would need to be done
differently in the future (e.g., more observations, etc.).
Brief Lab Report
For the lab report please answer the following questions. Use a short answer format, numbering
your responses accordingly. You will complete a lab report based on this project. The lab report
is worth 50 points. Please type up your answers and clearly identify the question you are
answering by numbering your responses. Unless otherwise noted, you should be able to answer
each question with approximately 1 to 4 sentences, in some cases a paragraph. Each student
needs to turn in a separate report.
1. In the Schachter et al. (1991) article:
a. (1 pt) What was the research question?
b. (1 pt) What was the research hypothesis?
2. In the Ruback and Juieng (1997) article:
a. (1 pt) What was the research question?
b. (1 pt) What was the research hypothesis of study 1?
3. (3 pts) What research question were you trying to answer by doing your observation
project and why was this question important to you?
4. (3 pts) What was your research hypothesis? What was the reason underlying your
hypothesis?
5. (3 pts) What was the operational definition of the naturally occurring IV in your project?
What operational definition did you use for the DV in your project?
6. (2 pts) How did you avoid intervening in the situation you were observing so as to avoid
reactivity?
7. (3 pts) What specific procedures did you use for time sampling, situation sampling, and
participant sampling?
8. (3 pts) Describe the conclusions you would draw on the basis of the results of your study.
9. (4 pts) Identify at least 2 weaknesses of your study. Describe what type of follow-up
study would be needed to better support your hypothesis.
Results Section (25 pts):
I would like you to get experience presenting your findings in APA format. Therefore, this
section should be written formally and be consistent with APA style. For the purpose of this lab
assignment, please start the results section on a separate page. It should be 1 or 2 paragraphs.
This section will be graded on the clarity of your writing and presentation of your tables/figures
and on your use of APA style. Please see p. 506 - 514 of your book for information on the format
of the different sections of a paper.
Your written results section should have the following items:
1. State the purpose of the analysis.
2. Identify the descriptive statistic to be used to summarize results.
3. In your result section, you should mention your reliability (Interobserver agreement). For
this assignment, estimate the reliability using the percentage of agreements, agreements/
(agreements + disagreements) X 100. Then average across different estimates.
a. If your study requires you to count the frequency (or some other measure) of an
observed behavior then an alternative measure of reliability is the percentage
difference in counts, smaller#/larger X 100. For example, if observer 1 counts 30
cappuccinos and observer 2 counts 35 then there was 86% overlap in the counts
(30/35 x 100). Report the average reliability across the different group members.
4. Present a summary of the descriptive statistics across conditions in the text itself. Use the
appropriate descriptive statistics given the nature of your DV.
5. Present the inferential statistics that are relevant for answering your research question.
Make sure you report the statistical test you used and include the statistical results in text.
a. Here is an example of how to write up the results of a t-test:
More studying was observed in the morning hours (M = 2.3, SD = 0.8) than in the
afternoon hours (M = 1.2, SD = 0.4; t(19) = 3.18, p < .05).
6. State the conclusion that follows from each test, but do not discuss implications. The
results section should provide enough information to your reader to understand the results
of the study, but does not include an interpretation of the results.