Exciting the research topicover the past decade
2. Be able to apply these theories to solve realistic problems.
It is important that you have some understanding of how to apply theoretical frameworks in a way that allows you to gain insights into behaviours you may want to alter.
The readings and assignment tasks are designed to not only improve your application, analytical, and writing skills in the context of personality theory, but also your interest in the subject matter. We hope that this will help you perform well on the assessment tasks, but more importantly, that they will teach you important skills that will help you in your next challenge, regardless of whether you enter theworkforce or continue to do further study.
Overview of Assessment Tasks
Note: The survey will have items that measure personality, well-being, COVID19 behaviours, problematic smartphone use, and motivation. We will look at the COVID19 data in seminars and consider whether personality can predict how people behave in a truly novel situation (i.e. a pandemic). The smartphone data will form the basis of the lab report. The T3 cohort is typically quite small, so we asked T2 students to complete the additional items to provide a robust sample size for the T3 cohort. Finally, the students of HPS121 in T2 also completed this survey and used the personality and motivation data for their lab report. We have combined the data collection for these two units so that both have a really robust sample size to work with. In the case of HPS307/791, we are conducting genuine, publishable research – nothing here is contrived for assessment purposes only. You’ll be engaged with a real research project, in real time, with real data that will contribute to the personality literature. Exciting!
1.1 The research topic
In order to look more closely at this issue, we will investigate whether the relationship between personality and problematic smart phone use remains statistically unchanged under these conditions of prolonged stress. Specifically, HPS307 students will look at one Big 5 personality factor and problematic smart phone use. HPS791 students will look at any two Big 5 personality factors and problematic smart phone use. You will learn about the trait perspective in week 2, so we will not go into any detail about the personality factors here.
Your hypotheses should follow this format:
The first step is to develop an understanding of what the personality factors are, what they ‘look like’. Which personality factor you choose for your research report is up to you, but you will need to think about how each factor might be expressed or suppressed under COVID19 conditions. For example, how might someone high in extraversion experience the pandemic? How might someone who is high in conscientiousness behave during a health crisis? This is an application of critical thinking to the trait x environment interaction.
In order to make a prediction for hypothesis 3, you will need to think through hypotheses 1 and 2 carefully. Once you determine what you think will happen with your personality factor and problematic smartphone use, you can think through what this means for their relationship with one another.
HPS307 and HPS791
Horwood, S., & Anglim, J. (2018). Personality and problematic
smartphone use: A facet-level analysis using the Five Factor Model and
HEXACO frameworks. Computers in Human Behavior, 85, 349-359.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.04.013
We will use the following questionnaires in our survey. Not all of them are relevant to the assessment tasks, but the notation beside each reference indicates whether they are relevant to AT1 or AT2 (or both). You are welcome to look up the associated papers – the references are at the end of this document. The below information will be enough for you to write up your materials section for AT1. You can copy and paste but you may also like to finesse them a little and, where appropriate, format it in APA 7th style. Remember to only include the scales we used for AT1 data in your materials section.
i. International Personality Items Pool (IPIP) NEO (Goldberg et al., 2006; AT1 & AT2)
This 5-item self-report scale assesses an individual’s overall sense of satisfaction and contentedness with their life. It provides a global measure of subjective well-being. The five items are scored on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = ‘Strongly disagree’ to 7 = ‘Strongly agree’.
iv. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988)
This 100-item inventory measures the six personality factors of Honesty-humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. It also measures the facets that underpin each factor. Items are answered on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = ‘Strongly Disagree’ to 5 = ‘Strongly Agree’.
1.4 Assessment criteria
How well your Method section describes what was done to answer the research
question.
Your overall writing style (i.e. scientific writing).
1.5 Word count