Lab 2b.
Introduction
The topic of this lab is measuring the relationship between objectivity and creativity.
An important part of experimental psychology is the area of psychological testing and measurement (also called psychometrics). As one might imagine, there are many potential issues that can arise when measuring such things as attitudes, beliefs, and opinions. Such measurements are inherently more complicated than measuring purely objective things such as weights of objects or their lengths. As a result, the evolution of a psychological test is usually a long and involved process.
The present laboratory experiment is designed to investigate how two psychological tests are related to each other. The first, The Inventory of Student Explanation Preferences, or ISEP (Hergenhahn, 1962), is designed to measure an objectivity-subjectivity dimension. A high score supposedly indicates a tendency toward subjectivity and perhaps a mild rejection of the scientific method of acquiring knowledge. A low score supposedly indicates the acceptance of more objective explanations of various phenomena and perhaps a more favorable attitude toward science. The second test is an extremely crude measure of creativity in which a participant lists as many things as he or she can think of doing with a coat hanger. The participant is given three minutes to make the list. The number of items in the list constitutes the participant’s creativity score.
Phase 2 — Data Analysis and Report
Video that covers analysis and write up is here (Links to an external site.)
The collected data from all students (4 participants per student) is available here (Links to an external site.)
Note: you’ll want to download this CSV file
on Windows, right click and select “Save as” or something similar
on Mac, Ctrl+click and select “Download linked file as…”
Your next step will be to (1) analyze the data, and (2) write up the results in an APA manuscript.
Data analysis:
Compute appropriate descriptives for demographic data (age, gender)
Compute a Pearson correlation coefficient between the ISEP scores and the Coat Hanger Test scores.
Compute a Spearman rank correlation coefficient between the ISEP scores and the Coat Hanger Test scores.
How to write an APA lab report:
Your lab report MUST be in correct APA format. You can use your APA template from Lab 1 as a starting place. As such, each of the major APA sections (intro, method, results, discussion, references) must be present. A sample APA lab report can be viewed here (Links to an external site.)
Introduction — restate the purpose of the study (see above) in your own words. This should not be more than one or two paragraphs.
Method — Briefly describe the method of our study. Must contain the following subsections:
Participants: How many? Mean/sd/range of age? Genders?
Materials: Describe the ISEP and the Coat Hanger Test.
Procedure: Describe the procedure of data collection, and describe how data were scored.
Results — Write the results of both correlation analyses in the “Results” section of your lab report. Tell me what you did (i.e., what analysis?) and what you found (i.e., the results).
Example (don’t just copy this!): “We performed a Pearson correlation test between hours spent studying and GPA. Hours spent studying and GPA were strongly positively correlated, r(123) = 0.61, p = .011.”
Discussion — Answer the following questions. Note: I am not asking you to answer these in a bulleted list. Rather, craft your discussion section in such a way to smoothly address each of these questions in a flowing narrative. One good approach would be to answer each question (or related questions) in a separate paragraph. Note that you should find at least two or three additional references (journal articles, please!) to support your claims.
What relationship was being investigated in the study? Would you expect to find such a relationship? Explain.
Explain the results, assuming that the two tests were actually measuring what they were designed to measure.
What are some possible weaknesses of the ISEP and/or the Coat Hanger Test of creativity?
Do you feel that your participants would score approximately the same on these two tests if they were administered again?
Would you expect performance on the creativity test to be related to IQ? To what other variables might either test be related?
Discuss other (possibly better) measures of creativity.
References — Please list any references that you used to support your discussion above. Most successful lab reports will have 2-3 relevant journal article references.
The completed lab report is worth 20 points. Submit your lab report in the Assignments tab on Canvas.