Thank you for watching this week 3 CHEN 496 lecture. And so for this week, we're going to talk about time and event sampling method, which we already covered a little bit in our lab last week. And we're also going to talk about how to form your research question.
And then we're going to have an overview of your report. observation report guidelines. Okay, so let's go ahead and get started. So if you recall from the lecture, from the lab class last week, we talked about event sampling and time sampling. So event sampling, it's used to document the number of times a behavior happens.
So for example, if you are counting how many times a child is clapping her his hand and during like the whole class period of time. So you probably can use time sampling. You can tally mark each time a child engages in this target activity, maybe like clapping hands. And this is, so for this event sampling method, it's good for the behavior that have like a clear beginning and end.
So for example, if the child starts clapping hand and then stops, you will have like a clear indication. But this is not good method for behaviors that occur like in high frequency or overextended period of time. So for example, if the child was reading the whole time, then the event sampling won't make sense.
Because it's just the whole time, and then you just check one mark, and that doesn't really apply to this overextended time of behavior. Or if this child is doing a pencil tapping, has this recurrent behavior like happens over and over again um and so then that's not a good indicator using the event sampling right because if this child is like tapping the pencil over and over over and again and for an extended period of time then you won't be able to really accurately capture the behavior you So usually like you can see like for the event sampling method, we will have like a tally marks right and so during like a specific time period like in the class in the classroom and right here is like a math, language, music and how many times this child twisting or clenching hands right so you tally mark that. So you will be able to see each target behavior happen how many times during the extended period of time. So in our case, if you wanted to observe target behaviors in one and a half hour during our lab observation time, if you're using event sampling, you can just set that time as your duration.
like one and a half hour. And during this whole one and a half hour, how many times you saw the target behavior. You see it occurs and then you just tally mark that.
So this is event sampling. So one of the drawbacks for event sampling is that it might not be accurate in a way that it's hard to get the inter-reader reliability. As you can tell, it's tally marking each time this behavior happens during that extended period of time.
And if you are calculating inter-rater reliability with your partner, then if your partner is missing the tally mark, then that means that that part you're not agreeable with each other. So it will be a little bit hard for you to accurately get a high reliability. for event sampling. And then let's talk about the time sampling.
Even though it's very similar purpose for time sampling, Time sampling, it's all used to record how many times a certain behavior happens. But this one is a little bit different because we predetermine the unit of time, like time samples. Sometimes people use like 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes. minute depending on the behaviors that you're observing right so you will find like right amount of length of your time sample to observe certain type of behavior so within each time sample or we say in interval, then you just check if the target behavior ever happened or not, right?
And so you just observe like within each unit and whether this behavior happens or not. So this is not so good for like a very low frequency behaviors, which means that, for example, if this child never exhibit like, you know, throwing tantrum, throwing tantrum, and then you want to observing that. And then each time sample, like, for example, if you have like a 30 second time sample interval, and like for...
For a lot of intervals, it will just have absent of behavior, like no marks or zeros for those behaviors, which is not so good indicator for low frequency behaviors. But it is really good for multiple behaviors, like on-task or off-task behaviors. Sorry, there's a typo. It's not off-task, so like on-task or off-task behaviors, or when they're talking, right, during the each-time sample, if they talk, then just check, right? If not talking, no check.
And then you move on to the next sample. If they are still talking, you still check. And if no talking or talking stopped, and then just no, just zero, right? So basically... This method is more suitable for the purpose of our research report, like observation report, in which we're going to have some practice in the lab class this week.
And this is an example of time sampling record form. This is also going to be your lab assignment this week. I will give you more introduction or instruction about it once we start the lab class this week. As you can see, it's pretty simple.
You indicate all of the information and you define your observed behaviors. Let's say if you have like three specific behavioral categories, then you just define three behavioral categories. And then you decide the time sample or interval.
It could be one minute or 0.5 minute or three minute or five minute. Usually I would recommend that do not have the time sample like more than five minutes. Because in that way. you probably wanted to put more intervals within each time sample for example like 10 second intervals to capture the behaviors right so i would recommend you just to design within within five minutes right like the same not within not decide within five minutes but designed the length of the time sample based on the behaviors that you are observing.
So at each time interval, you indicate the child, the target child. So at one interval, at one time sample, you only observe one child, and you indicate the characteristic of the child, and then on the setting, if it's indoor or outdoor, and behavior one. So once you're like when you have your definition of your behaviors, for example, if you wanted to see like a growth motor skill, like climbing or like walking or like running, right? So the different type of behavior within that. And then you will indicate a checkmark.
if it happens within this like a certain unit or certain interval like a time sample. So this is what we say like a time sampling and even sampling method. Now let's look at, let's move on to talk about how to develop your research question. I'm sure this, you have probably learned this multiple times in your previous research method class. But for us, I think this is just going to be a quick overview.
And what I wanted to focus on today is really about observation report guidelines. But before we start, I do want to emphasize, why do we need to develop a good research question? So it's the most important component of a research study, of any research study.
So no matter if it's... like a study published on science or nature or any study that you write in your class report. You have to have a research question and the study itself is evolved around your research question. Basically what you choose to review, basically the literature review, right? And starting over there and then for the method that you're using to answer your research question.
And also the type of analysis plan you're going to employ to best answer your research question. Those are all the things that, you know, like basically you need to, based on your research question, in order to develop all of those different components, like type of research method and type of analysis you need to run, all depending on your research question. So what consists of a good research question?
First, it has to be clear and simple. So this sounds easy, but a lot of times we tend to develop research questions that are overly complicated and it's not really accessible to people like to the general audience and but by having the research study you need to have like a clear simple research question that's really kind of like that's clearly defined the variables that you are interested in and what what is the relationship you wanted to examine is there like if there is something predicting another thing or if it's like a comparison comparison between between two groups, right? Those are like all part of the research question that you wanted to make sure that you're conveying that and making it clear and simple. And another one is it has to be relevant to your research project, right? And it has to be an issue that covered by the research.
And so this should be an issue that you can be researched about right and also it has to be manageable, which means that it has to be in the right scope, not too broad, not too narrow. When it's too broad, then you won't be able to have good operationalization. We also call it operational definition of your variable, which I'm going to talk about more later. And if it's too narrow, then it's not very applicable.
to general audience or like to other contexts right um and then next thing is like it has to be measurable or observable so taking the example of our study we need to make sure that the variables that we are observing or behaviors that we are we are observing is measurable or observable if you are Thinking about kids'attachment, for example, right? So attachment, because some of you are interested in attachment, which is a really good component or aspect in children's development to understand, right? But at the same time, you need to think about if...
This is the right project for assessing somebody's attachment style. As you can see that attachment has to be measured in experiment settings like in a strange situation. But the nature of our study is naturalistic observation. So you won't be able to really see attachment style of a group of kids just by observing them in just like one and a half an hour so it's hard for you to measure is it measurable it is measurable for attachment is it measurable right basically well i wanted to say like attachment is measurable in the sense that if you are designing an experiment and in a controlled environment and having Parents come in with their kids and then create this strange situation to test it out.
But it's not measurable through the nature. We are limited by the nature of our research study, by the settings. And we are doing naturalistic observation.
So we wanted to think about the behavior that is observable, that you can measure. For example, behavior that happens very frequently. at a preschool setting as you can see and observed from the videos that we saw in the lab class last week right a lot of like playing behavior language right motor skills motor skills right so all of those things like you can think about that we're social emotional right are they helping each other so basically Those behaviors have to be observable by a naturalistic observation and can be measured. And also the research question has to be legitimate.
It has to be a question, not a statement. And it has to be answerable. You can actually provide an answer to your research question. Let's say if you're comparing gender differences in terms of children's motor behavior, like motor skill, especially like a climbing behavior, right? And so by doing your research, carrying out your observation, you will be able to answer that question by observing a group of girls and group of boys at the setting of like outdoor maybe.
and to see how many times they're exhibiting the climbing behavior or the behavior of, you know, you're interested in. See, so basically this is what I mean by answerable, right? This is a question that can be answered and can be researched about. So let's kind of like get a really closer look.
like what's the steps usually involved in developing your research question. We usually start from, you know, identifying a broader subject of interest. So this interest could be based on your interest, your personal interest, but at the same time, it has to be backed up by, you know, previous literature and or sometimes the data you already have.
So in our case, we won't have the data. But we will have some pilot data, which means that you will carry out some pilot observation at the center. So you will be able to see at least preliminarily some of the behaviors that you're interested in. Are they actually happening in the setting that you are observing?
And is there previous literature, existing literature? examine some sort of like similar like a behavior or like variables. So we start from like very broad. For example, if I'm interested in children's math learning, this is really broad, right?
Like how do we like measure it? It's hard. Yeah, so it's hard for us to really operationalize it. So then we narrow down to like this topic to ask a question.
How do children learn math? So now it's a little bit better. So we wanted to know how children learn math. But as you can see, it's still pretty broad.
How do children learn math? It's like a lot of things happening, right? And is it through like what type of things that you are thinking about math learning?
It's not clear in here, right? And then the next step is like a further narrowing down to specific and measurable questions. Then I would be interested in like how does the factor of gender Influence preschoolers use of number words and number gestures in classroom math learning activities in the United States. Right. So right here you can see that it's narrowed down to different factors.
Like we wanted to first we have like a clear grouping variable, which is the gender. Right. So we wanted to compare the gender differences. And influence preschoolers, so we have like a preschool age, right? And how do they learn math?
And then we operationalize like learning math behavior as like their use of number words and number gestures, right? And then in what setting? In their classroom setting when they're learning math, right?
In the United States, right? So this is a close, like narrow enough, it's specific enough. so for you to be able to measure and observe the behavior. Of course when you actually carry out observation, you will have to operationalize what you mean by number words, and in your coding book, and what you mean by number gestures. So those will be operationalized, but at least by this question you will be able to see very clearly about what type of thing that you're examining.
You're examining the group differences, and you're examining their use of number words and gestures in certain settings. So this is how you develop, usually what involves when you're developing a research question. So the elements to con... to consider of course includes the construct right what is the idea you're investigating so the constructs that like what we said like a grouping variables and the variables of like math learning behavior right those are the constructs that you are investigating and you also need to think about application does this question show relevance to the field you Basically, like for example, for the math learning question, does this show the relevance to the field of child development? Right.
Like a lot of times, especially like in kids development, like math development or like cognitive development, we try to understand how they learn math and what they use to learn math. Right. So it is showing the relevance to the field. And then we also need to say, like, you need to consider why is this important?
What's the implication, right? So those questions involves you answering it in a way that it is important or it is significant. Because, you know, we say like there is an achievement gap between boys and girls in STEM field. And.
We wanted to trace back to, so it is important to trace back to their preschool ages when they started learning math and to see if there is a difference starting at the very beginning when they're learning math or not, right? If there is no difference, there must be something happening like later on, for example, gender stereotype, right? Like introducing in the classroom in the later age that kind of like... basically prompt girls to do more of like a liberal art type of thing versus boys were prompted more to do like a STEM subject, right? So this is showing the importance and the implication of this question.
So in your paper, you also need to kind of Indicate that in your introduction and also in your discussion. Usually we will talk about it in the discussion as well. What's the implication and why do you need to do this in the intro?
and what's the implication for this in your discussion section. Okay, now we're going to switch gear to talk about the overview of observation report. So basically this document is also available on Canvas.
So after I review today, please take some time to also take a look at the document because this is the document that you're going to use as a guideline to develop your research observation report. Okay so we're gonna go ahead get started let me move that Okay. Okay, so basically for this project or for this report, the goal for this report is basically for you to design an observation project that you observe one or more aspects of development in two groups of children. It's either comparing boys and girls'gender or comparing...
comparing age, different age group, or comparing group of children who are indoor versus group of children who are all outdoor. So there are different grouping variables, right? So the goal for this is for you to develop this project or to carry out observation, and you will definitely you will collect and analyze data. using SPSS and also according to APA style to create a report, to write a report.
So there is something important for you to know is that if you have done another observation project in another class, like PSYC 395 or you have taken 496 before, you will be able to write a report. You must do a different project using different variables. And also very important to note that this paper is not something that you can write just before.
It's due date, we have a page limit, and you need to do a lot of research beforehand even before you carry out an observation. So literature review requires you some time to do it. and create a coding scheme, code the data, and run analysis, and actually write in the result and discussion.
Those all need time for you to do it. And it's also, this is a paper for you to, you know, like you will need to revise multiple times before you finish the final draft. So making sure that you start early. And so I'm putting right here that you're starting week three, which is ideal.
Of course, I know I understand you're busy, but at least I think you can start with literature review and forming your research question and writing it down on the paper. And so basically, that's like the starting of this project, right? And then your topic and your coding scheme needs to be approved by me before you carry out the formal observation.
So the formal observation begins on week six. In week six and week seven you have two days of formal observation. So before that we will have lab assignments and also you will do pilot testing to test your measures, basically the behavior.
measures. You will also need to calculate inter-rater reliability. At each step, we will discuss in the lab class and you will talk to me about your research question and the coding scheme. Once it's approved, you're ready to go. And so some data will be jointly collected with the lab partner.
Most of your data will be independently collected. So each of the students will write and submit one final report. So another important note is that because you will collect data with part of the data with your lab partner, and it's the ideal case scenario that you will have the same.
behavioral variable with your partner and the only difference is that you are comparing different things so you have a different grouping variable so in that sense you save most of the time it's most efficient way for both you and your partner to collect data but if you really insist that you wanted to like you and your partner wanted to do something different then you will have to find time for your partner to be trained on your coding scheme about the behavior and then to carry out observation with you and to calculate inter-rater reliability. So it's the best if you and your partner to have the same behavioral variable but different grouping variable. Okay, so we're going to talk about that more in this section. So basically, in this research report, you will form your research question based on one grouping variable and one behavioral variable.
Okay, so one grouping variable meaning that you're comparing between the groups. It's either gender as your grouping variable, you're comparing girls versus boys, or age as your grouping variable, you're comparing preschoolers with toddlers or junior preschoolers with toddlers. It's up to you, but you compare two age groups.
And then also you compare contact settings. For example, you compare indoor-outdoor play settings or certain activity settings. For example, like... at a circle time versus at the activity table, right, like settings, and comparing behavior.
So the context setting, you can talk to me if you have any question. So there's different ways that you can do this, and so it will be dependent on your interest and research question. So we can talk about that more individually and in the lab class.
So you The bottom line is that you are making comparisons between two groups. Either this group is by person, by its characteristic of person, or by the characteristic of setting. And then you will identify one behavioral variable. So behavioral variable is like a general behavioral category.
General behavior, like playing behavior. And this behavioral variable has to have like two or three levels or two or three specific behaviors categories. We say like a behavioral categories.
Like we talked about in the lab class last week, right? For example, for the cognitive language behavioral variable, you can identify two or three categories. Such as, you know, like we think this behavioral variable. You can identify specific categories like if they are making analogies or using spatial words or using number words.
Those are just examples. For playing behavior, you can identify two or three categories of behavior such as associative play, parallel play, or solidary play. And similar things for motor skills. you may identify like writing or cutting tearing paper picking up putting down toys etc right okay so basically as you can see behavioral variable is more general term and under each behavior variable there will be the specific behaviors that you are observing right um so which is more specific You will need to develop a very clear operational definition for each of your specific behavioral categories and create a clear coding scheme.
This is very important for you to operationalize your behaviors, the behaviors that you are observing, which will maximize your reliability and also save you time in terms of the coding. So like I mentioned earlier, you and your partner will choose the same behavioral variable, but different grouping variable. This is designed to basically be the most efficient way for you and your partner to collect data together and code data and get reliability.
But the only different thing is that you're using different grouping variables. So this way maximizes your time and effort and also helps you to get better reliability. So if you end up really wanting to do something very different from others or from your partner, or like you and your partner doesn't have like agreement on certain things on the behavioral variable, talk to me and we will see what we're going to do.
But I think it's the best to you for your like it's best in your interest. to have the same behavioral variable with your partner and using the different grouping variable. Alright, so when you are thinking about those behaviors that you wanted to observe, you wanted to ask yourself some questions.
Is this behavioral category sufficiently specific and can be observed regularly and frequently at the daycare center? And also, is there literature to support? the topic that you're investigating.
So if you're looking at gender difference between you know playing behavior then you wanted to find to see you wanted to find the literature like empirical articles to see if there are other researchers investigated a similar topic and you wanted to know what they found and what's their method. they're using. So basically for your observation, there's one important component is the coding.
So you will develop the coding manual and the coding scheme. So in the coding manual, you will have to develop very clear operational definitions for each specific behavior and grouping variable. So this includes like what counts for an episode or like onset or offset of this specific behavior category.
If you are saying like helping behavior in children and what counts as an onset or offset as a helping behavior. Probably like, you know, when two children working on the same thing and one child is supporting another one by doing something, right? Doing X, Y, and Z. So those are like, you know, operational definition of your coding or like specific behaviors. And you also wanted to provide examples or like sometimes like what's coded into this coding, right?
If you, let's say helping behavior and you will give like a very specific example to describe an episode of helping behavior and also what consider as like not helping behavior if they are just playing together without helping each other right for example two children were just doing associative play then that's not considered as helping behavior. So basically you just need to make sure that your operational definition is clear for someone who doesn't know your coding, who's just reading your coding for the first time but they can actually tell how to code this behavior. And you also need to specify how it was coded.
Did you use time sampling, event sampling? and whether the data is continuous or categorical. So continuous variable like it's continuous basically like you know how many times the frequency of certain behavior happened in your observation time then that's continuous variable. Categorical variable could be like gender right like either male or female.
Age is a really interesting one so usually we consider age as a continuous variable when we use number age like in years as like indicator like we throw in their age by just to look at covariations, things like that, then that's considered as a continuous variable. But in our case, age is actually the categorical variable, like age group, right? Either preschooler or toddler, either junior preschooler or pre-K, right? So basically, it's like categories. There's two categories.
Okay, and so you will need to use peer-reviewed journal articles to help you develop appropriate operational definition. So once you have behavior of interest in mind, the first thing you need to do is to check if there are some previous literature conducted or like study conducted to exam similar topic. And how do they operationalize the behaviors that you are interested in?
And to see if you can adapt their behavioral operation definition. So those are the questions that you can ask yourself when you are developing a coding scheme. How will you know if you are seeing this behavior? And will this definition be clear to someone else, like your partner? Or someone who is not familiar with your coding just yet, reading it for the first time, will they be able to tell exactly what you mean by this behavior?
And how you rate each behavior, that's another thing to think about. Do you rate it as either present or absent? or like tally the frequency like in the event sampling or intensity like rate in scale like really mild or medium or like very intense especially for example when you are thinking about social emotional expression right like their emotional expression happy is like very happy or just like not so happy or like kind of like a negative right so it can be categorical but can also be used as intensity okay and this is another question to ask yourself is which reading approach will maximize your reliability and answer your research question better For example, I talked about earlier about event sampling and time sampling, how those two can be a little bit different in terms of when you're calculating your reliability.
Because time sampling has predetermined the time unit, so your time unit is very stable and within each time unit you observe if a behavior is present or not. So in that sense, it's a little bit easier to calculate reliability with your partner. And so that approach in terms of like when you're looking at absent or present alpha behavior, that approach is better than event sampling.
But of course, it's all depending on your research question, like the type of behavior that you are examining. And the next is that if there is any pre-existing coding available from other researchers like other published journal articles, would you be able to adapt that and cite in their definitions? So you can totally adapt somebody else's coding scheme.
The thing is that you will have to explicitly state. in your method section that your coding scheme is adapted from someone else. and so this is allowed and also it doesn't count towards like a plagiarism because you're citing others coding scheme and then you're using a similar coding scheme to answering different questions okay um and also while you're using time sampling you need to decide what length of time samples you will use why do you need to use that specific time sample like i mentioned earlier you Some behaviors might make sense to just have 30 seconds time sample or time interval. Some behavior you can just have like one minute or like three minutes, right?
So it really depends on like how frequent this behavior happens and then what length or time length or interval could best capture the frequency of this behavior. You will get a little bit more clear answer when you carry out your pilot testing or this week when we're in the lab class and you're gonna go carry out your time sampling observation method and in that situation you will be able to see certain type of behavior how frequently they happen it happened okay All right, and then for the data collection and observation, you will just basically use the CCF facility to conduct your observation. You are only allowed to do the observation at the scheduled time, the lab time, so during our lab class time, which means that you won't be able to come back at a different time to do the observation.
That's why the attendance is very important on those days that you are collecting data as you cannot really make it up after if you missed it. So for data collection you should aim at least like 120 minutes of observation time in general like two hours from two days right so ideally you could have one and a half hour per day and two days you will have like 180 minutes, like three hours. In that way, you can have more data and have a better indication of the patterns. For example, if you are having like 120 minute observation time, then you can divide it up into different time samples.
For example, if you are using three minute time samples, then 120 minutes will be about like 40 three minute time samples. Within each time sample, you indicate each of your behavior, the frequency, whether it has happened or not, and you observe one child and tell you the frequency of each specific behavior added as it happens okay within each time sample um so for example if you have a three behavioral categories uh like specific category like running climbing and writing for your behavioral variable um and you will tally each of the behavior as it occurs within your time sample okay for that child not that uh you can make a note that um you know like you can do the time sample as you know like a taut frequency or you can do it as like either you see it or not right so it all depends on how you gonna calculate how you're gonna want to how you wanted to observe your behavior okay um so there are some times that you will have like zero occurrence right like um basically it's the absent of the behavior you wanted to observe um and this kind of sample can only account for like a very small amount of your total observation um if you are frequently obtaining like zeros which means like absent of behavior you you need to reconsider your participant pool or definition which means that you probably selected a different sample like selected a wrong age group maybe if you were like selecting an infant group and observing their language behavior then you probably going to get a zero like 90% of time, right? And also like how you define a behavior, you wanted to see, you wanted to make sure that, you know, zero occurrence doesn't account for majority of your observation, which means there must be something wrong with the observation or definition.
You can definitely talk with me when... this occurs. For the time sample you collected, 25% of the sample should be coded by both you and your lab partner and used for inter-rater reliability. For example, if you use the 43-minute time samples, 10 of those time samples should be double-coded by you and your partner.
And inter-reader reliability also needs to be established before the formal data collection, which will happen during week six and week seven. And so you and your partner need to reach a good reliability. Usually it means like over 80% of agreement between you and your partner on two consecutive practice observations.
and you will need to receive approval from me to move forward on this. So you and your partner will choose the same behavioral variable with the same specific categories, but using the different grouping variables. And for the data analysis, it depends on your research question and type of observation you conduct. if you are comparing two groups on their frequency, like for example certain behavior frequency between two groups, then you're probably going to use t-test, right?
But if you are observing something like how they correlate with something else, for example if child gender is correlated with their, for example, certain behavior, you wanted to use like just for example like if the gender correlates with their climbing behavior then you will use pure sense correlation analysis so those are depending on your research question and we will discuss in the lab class you will need to use SPSS to carry out your analysis and we will have a review session on that as well Okay, next we're going to talk about writing your report in APA format. So the formatting is based on the 7th edition of APA style manual and at the end of this guide, there are two web page or web link you can click and Basically, you can review specific guidelines for how to structure or format your paper. If you have questions, feel free to ask me.
Those are the points that you can easily earn as long as you pay attention to it. It's a very pretty standard 12-point Times New Roman font. one inch margin, double spaced, no extra space between paragraphs, and page numbers in the upper right corner, APA section headers, and page number needs to be present, the title page, abstract, and should be on their own page, and introduction method, result, discussion, other contributions should be together, approximately from like eight to six, seven.
Sorry, five to eight pages. And so other sections have no page limit, like your reference page, tables, appendices. And yeah, those sections doesn't have a page limit.
So for the paper sections, you will have to have title page, abstract and keywords. Introduction, Method section, Result section, Discussion section, References. Table of Figures is optional.
If you do, there's two extra points for you. for the paper and appendices and also it's going to be evaluated on the overall writing quality so the total of this paper worth 80 points okay and on the rest will be the sections like what you need to do followed by each section so the title page is gonna be your first page right and the specific style is already written right here. And you can also consult with APA guideline on the title page.
How do you formulate, basically put together a title page. So your abstract needs to be just in one paragraph and it's usually about 200 to 250 words. And for the abstract, you just need to summarize your observation report.
Start with your research question and hypothesis. Like, oh, this present study investigates the relationship between child gender and their climbing behavior. We hypothesize that boys will exhibit more. climbing behavior than girls for example right and then you use two to three sentences to talk about your methods how you collected data and how many data points you collected and boys and girls what's the participant demographic right and two to three pages two to three sentences talk about your findings and one to two sentences talk about your discussion right like implication usually so at the end of the abstract you include three to five keywords of your study like a labor study if you look at gender differences in their motor skill then you will have like you know gender motor skill a preschooler and so or like any setting you wanted to put in there right like outdoor settings see things like that okay and then after abstract starting a new page it's going to be your introduction section um so you don't put introduction this word in the title okay and for this page you start with your actual title of your paper and then um Starting with your first paragraph, you state your general statement of your topic and define the key terms.
And what's your thesis? It's your purpose statement, right? What basically tells your reader what your study is about at the end of the paragraph. And so this paragraph is more like a broad topic and setting the stage for your study.
And then starting the second paragraph, you use the rest of the introduction section to talk about the literature, the theories and literatures that you you use to support your topic. First you define or find any developmental theory or approach that you apply that relates to your study. And then you synthesize the research together. You have to have at least four peer-reviewed research articles to support your topic or your research question. And then you synthesize.
how they are related to each other and how they related to your research question. And then at the end of the introduction, sorry this should be introduction not instruction, At the end of the introduction, you'll state your research question and your hypothesis. It's going to be like one to two paragraphs. And identify your primary goal and state a specific hypothesis you're making. And after that will be your method section.
and so i already stated like usually like you need to have the certain page limit to certain section and talk to me if you are like too over the page limit or like only have like a 0.5 page of the method then you need to talk to me to see where where you can make changes Okay, so the participants is your first section, and you describe the total number of data points that you collected, and give basic information with descriptive statistics, like their gender, their age categories of children observed, and what's the setting. And you need to italicize all of the letters, including n, like what n equals to what. Remember that you do not have a total number of participants in this case because you will just use your total number of the observation time samples. For example, if you have 40 time samples, you will say that you have a total of 40 time samples. Within those time samples, 20 were devoted to male.
or like a boys and 20 were devoted to girls if you are comparing groups okay comparing gender groups but if you are comparing um if you're comparing uh like age groups and you will say like total 40 uh time samples collected 20 were for preschoolers and 20 were for toddlers okay Then you will talk about measures. The measure will be your behavioral variables, including your operational definition, types of variable if it's categorical or continuous, and explain your coding procedure. If you adapted or used a coding scheme from other people, you need to make sure that information is correct. is cited and included in your reference as well. And you also need to provide a descriptive statistics of each of your behavioral variable, okay?
And like a percent of time, percent of each category or frequency. For continuous variable, then you will just report like mean, standard deviation. and minimum and maximum value.
You include inter-rater reliability data for each of the behavioral variable. Report your inter-rater reliability values using at least 25 percent of time samples that you coded. You both coded using the same sample at the same time.
And then next section is the procedure. You briefly describe the coding coding procedure exactly how your data is collected and how were the coder trained to code constantly within and between coders and how was the pilot testing was there a pilot testing what procedure were used and you will have a pilot testing basically once you have your targeted behavior and we're gonna pilot test first using the the sample method using the method for example if you're using time sampling and you're going to use that as well and describe that in your method section and um and also you indicate the time of the day days of the week you collected this data how many hours observation you you carried out to collect this data and how many time samples that you collected and any relevant information from for other researchers that to help them understand your coding or procedure, you feel free to include it in here. So after the method section, then you talk about your results.
So results will be based on your hypothesis, right? So if you have three categories, three behavioral categories, and you're comparing gender differences of those three categories, you probably wanted to restate your research questions and hypothesis and then you state the name of the inferential statistic for each of the variables. For example, you will say like oh a t-test was used or like a Pearson correlation was conducted to examine the relationship between a x and y or like a t-test or independent sample t-test was used to investigate the group differences. or like gender differences between boys and girls in terms of their um you know playing behavior like a parallel playing behavior and then you would just report a parallel play and then next section you probably say like um if the t-test was used to investigate um the gender differences in uh in their solitary play right and then you you report statistic. So basically for each the behavioral variable that you're comparing between groups and you will report as its own paragraph and you will report by behavioral variables.
After the results section you will include So right after the results section, it's going to be the discussion section. So for the discussion section, you first need to restate your research question, including the variable that you are using and your hypothesis, and explicitly state whether your results support your hypothesis. And so you do not need to put any numbers in the discussion section as you did in the results section. Right here it's just like a summarized result and does it support your hypothesis or not. And discuss the finding in the context of previous research.
So you will say like this doesn't or this is support so the current study or like the finding resonates with the previous research or like a supports the previous research on x y and z and basically connecting your finding to the research that you reviewed in the introduction and discuss the similarities if there's like you know something you did similar that you achieved the result a similar result or like this is a conversion evidence even though you investigated differently using different method, but you still observed a similar pattern as previous studies showed. Or if your finding didn't support the hypothesis, you can make the speculation why there is differences, whether your result kind of contradicts or didn't support previous findings. And those can be speculations and it's like an explanation, basically connecting what could be improved in the future or what could be the reason that the result didn't support your hypothesis. And so relatedly, when you're talking about, you know, like if something is related or not related or like supported or not supported um you will talk about at least two limitations of your study like for example why the limitations are might have impacted your study or results right limitation could be like you know um the result the methods that you used that limits your you limits the quality or limits the, for example, like we discussed different type of methods, then probably like, you know, if you're only using the frequency, you won't be able to see the quality of the interaction or quality of the behavior, right?
So that could be like something like limits your observation in terms of children's, to help you to really fully observe children's development. In your last paragraph, you summarize some take-home message, conclude with the discussion, just like giving a few sentences. Summarize, really, really briefly summarize the study and how this study can be applied to other contexts or why the findings are important. for practices, for theories, for knowledge, for the field, right? And you also could propose like a future direction for this topic.
If you were to do this study or carry out similar observation in the future, what would you do? Or like what kind of observation you're going to carry out to further understand this topic? And then after that it's going to be the references, right? So for references you can consult with the APA style guidelines and there's a handout guide and there is a specific one just talk about the reference, how you structure the reference page. So definitely use this, take advantage of this guideline to help you get a correct formatting for this paper.
and then um so after the references you can have like a table um so the table could summarize like descriptive data like a gender um or like age group um so how many data point towards like each gender and each gauge group and also for the specific behavior what's the um the descriptive statistic what's the mean standard deviation right so this more like a descriptive data and then after that will be your appendices so each appendix will be on its own page do not like uh made it make them like uh into same pages okay so each appendices each appendix is going to be on one page um and for example the first is going to be your coding scheme You will see the template after when we are developing the paper together. And also the second appendix usually it's going to be your coding sheet. It's the blank coding sheet, just like what I showed you for the time sample coding sheet. That form is your coding sheet. You can just copy and paste that as your appendix B.
And appendix C is the descriptive. descriptive statistic output from your SPS. So SPS you can actually export the output into either a Word document or PDF file and you copy paste onto your your report and Appendix D is gonna be the inferential statistic outputs. For example, your t-test, your inter-reader reliability will go here, or like a Pearson's correlation will go here. So for all of the output, the relevant statistic for your output, basically you need to highlight the parts that you reported in your results section.
So let me show you what it means. So for example, right here you highlight the part that you reported, right? For example, like a male, frequency, and percent.
Those are the things that you're going to report in your paper, in your results section. So you will highlight it. And age group, you will highlight the part that you reported in the results section.
And this is the descriptive. statistic for gender and this is a descriptive statistic for age group and this is the inferential statistic for the behavior. So you will say like you know for parallel play between male or female what's the mean and standard deviation and for the parallel play what's the sample t-test right so you're gonna you report those highlighted parts are the ones that you report in your result section okay all right so after you're done with your appendices and that's all so your paper is going to be all done And so your paper will be graded on also on overall quality of writing.
As you can see, every single section I have designated points that you can earn for that section. For the overall quality of the writing, it's worth like six points. Just a few reminders.
There are different parts of this paper and you read through the whole guideline and let me know if you have any questions and definitely use this guideline to guide your work okay and um so if you don't follow the guideline it's actually going to show on your paper and there will be points deducted from from your paper so making sure that you follow the guideline and using the time in the lab to ask questions and also feel free to come to my office hours too um And also, definitely in this paper, like I mentioned, it requires multiple drafts before it's ready to submit. So making sure that your writing is clear and logical, and you proofread your writing as well. Otherwise, you're going to lose points for the overall quality. Remember to use the APA format again. We have a guidelines and if you have any questions regarding that, we can go over together.
Let me know. And of course, on top of using APA formatting, you need to use formal academic language. and you need to formulate or create this paper using your own words.
And do not use long quotes. I think it's really relevant for this observational report if you're using long quotes, because long quotations are usually used in those qualitative... exams, qualitative observations.
So in our paper, making sure that you do not use like long quotes unless it's like the specific operational definition that you adapted from other coding manual. And making sure that you include the citation and page number if this happens. You will submit this paper with your assignments on Canvas and making sure that you submit it by the deadline.
For the assignment, if you turn in late, it's going to be 10% deduction of your earned points each day. If it's passed, it's due day. Non-penalty late submission only made with very rare extraordinary circumstances.
So making sure you plan ahead and start your paper early. At the end, I gave you some support like the link for writing support and definitely utilize all of those resources. They are free for you to use.
And they give you really good feedback on your paper. So those are some general guidelines of the paper. Okay.
All right. So that's all for today's lecture. And after the lecture and making sure that you review this guideline very carefully and highlight any part of the guideline that you have a question and we can.
answer the questions at the beginning of the lab class this week. Alright, and I will see you in the lab class.