For this participation assignment, you have to design a naturalistic observational study. This would be a systematic observational study; you would not intervene in the situation you are observing.
For instance (please do not use this example): I am interested in consumer spending behavior. Therefore, for my observational study, I would sit at a mall entrance for an hour on a Saturday afternoon. My research question is, “Do teenagers buy more than older adults?” I hypothesize that older adults would buy more than teens, as teens may be more likely to use online shopping. To study this question, I would count all teenagers (or people who appeared to be in their teens) and older adults (those who appeared to be 65 or older) who exit the mall during the chosen hour and count how many teenagers and older adults carried shopping bags vs. how many did not.
Write a short report addressing the following questions.
What is your topic and research question?
Where would you go to observe this?
What is your hypothesis and why?
What behavior would you track to test your hypothesis?
Some guidelines:
Keep in mind that naturalistic observation would occur only in public spaces, per research ethics!
The behavior you select must be related to some psychological phenomenon about which you can create a hypothesis.
The chosen behavior must be one for which you would expect a difference in the count data based on some IV (e.g., age, use of headphones/electronic devices, being alone vs. being in a group).
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