Human Psychology

Formulating the Hypothesis

The human psychology and behavior determine to a large extent the fundamental cognitive and affective processes that take place in people. There is a huge variation regarding analytical reasoning and perceptions amongst many populations worldwide. The same case applies to a group of students’ participation in class discussions who learn in the same classroom. The null hypothesis for testing such a case as in the example of the students is, basic motivational and cognitive processes do not improve student motivation to actively participate in discussions. The research hypothesis, on the other hand, would be basic motivational and cognitive processes improve student motivation to take an active part in discussions (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010).

Analysis of the Experimental Research Designs

The pretest-posttest control-group design involves assigning participants to experimental and control groups at random. Intervention is given to the experimental group whereas the control group receives no intervention. This design involves post-measurement interventions meaning that measurement occurs after the intervention. The posttest-only control group has the same features as the pretest-posttest control-group except for the feature of controlling the possible confusing effects of a pretest since it does not use a pre-intervention measurement. The Solomon four-group design exhibits all the features of the other designs as it also corrects for the confusing effects of a pre-test. Its only drawback is the increase in sample size that is required to meet the needs of four treatment groups. Since the sample size is not a big problem, the Solomon four-group design best suits the research hypothesis of this paper (Skidmore, 2008).

Potential Internal Validity Threats

Internal validity threats are the experimental procedures that involve the participants, which jeopardize the ability of a researcher to make right conclusions based on the data obtained in an experiment. Some of the internal validity threats include the uncertainty in precedence. This implies that knowing the causative variables of particular effects becomes difficult hence a lot of care has to be taken to avoid such confusion. Bias regarding selection can also be experienced, and this is due to the non-random procedure of selecting participants to groups. This problem can be solved through random assignments of participants (Skidmore, 2008).

Ethical Principles of the Research

The ethics of research requires that the forty-five students consent to their selection in the experiment of determining how to improve their motivation so that they can actively participate in discussions. The risk of harm to the participants should be minimal as much as possible, and this means that there should be no practices that deceptive which aim at extorting information from the participants. The anonymity of the participants has to be protected because they volunteered. A sample size of forty-five students best suits this research because it is not too large to handle and at the same time it is not too small to jeopardize the credibility of the results.

References

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466(7302), 29-29.
Skidmore, S. (2008). Experimental Design and Some Threats to Experimental validity: A Primer. Online Submission.