HPS304 : Advanced Social Psychology Assessment Task 3

These assessment guidelines will help you complete AT3 and are split into three sections.

1. General Information. Overviews the general admin for this assessment (e.g., due date, word count, submission details, etc.). It also provides the learning objectives of this assessment.
2. Topic Information. Overviews the specific topic of this assessment, including background information to the topic, the study idea, and an overview of your required materials.
3. Completing Your Assessment. Outlines what each section of the research proposal requires.

Collaboration and Academic Integrity

For this assignment, you will be given the opportunity to work collaboratively with other students to develop the research question which will form the basis of your research proposal, and to translate that into a proposed study/statistical analysis. These collaborative activities will be conducted in your tutorial classes in weeks 6, 8 and 10. However, Assessment Task 3 (AT3) is an individually written research proposal – you must write up and submit your proposal individually. That means that you and your group can have the same or similar research question, methodology, and data analysis plan. However, each group member should write and submit a final and separate proposal in their own words. There are no exceptions to this.

When it comes to written assessments, we understand students sometimes engage in actions without fully realising the repercussions of what they are doing. Some examples of academic integrity breaches in this context include using artificial intelligence to write content, sharing your research proposal with other students (past or present), and getting another person to write the assessment for you (either paid or unpaid). Engaging in these actions are all breaches of academic integrity.

If in doubt, you can use Turnitin before you submit your written assessment via the following website: Check your submission. The report takes a few hours (at minimum) to process, but it will show you any areas that may need revising and/or require more thorough paraphrasing. When checking the Turnitin report, look closely at what the report is identifying as the exact or similar as other sources (rather than looking at just the final percentage score). Since we give all students the same starter references for this assessment, these sections may be identified as identical to other sources. There will also likely by some similarity between your proposal and those of your group members. We expect this and would not penalise you for this when reviewing your work. 

Learning Objectives of the Assessment

AT3 targets the following Unit Learning Objectives:

Unit Learning Outcomes

ULO1 :Apply social psychology theory to contemporary research topics

ULO2 :Communicate social psychology theory and research to scientific and non-scientific audiences

ULO3 :Design novel research using social psychology literature and methods to address important theoretical and real-world problems

ULO4:Critically evaluate social psychology research

This table gives you a brief idea of what skills and content AT3 is will teach you. In the following sections, we will elaborate on exactly what this assessment is all about.

Overview

As you will have learned in HPS204 when writing your research proposal, social psychology knowledge is generated and maintained by cumulatively building upon prior research. This is a process of reading, understanding, and critiquing previous research and theory, and seeking to build upon it by developing new research questions and conducting studies.

You will also have learned that a research proposal is a piece of scientific writing that provides a justification/argument and plan for a study before it is conducted and reported. These kinds of proposals are commonplace in psychology (and science generally) and are used for a variety of purposes (e.g., funding applications, ethics applications)

In HPS204, you wrote a very general research proposal. In this unit, we are going to build on those skills by engaging you further with three important elements of the research proposal writing process:

1. Understanding and critiquing previous research to develop your own research question.
2. Translating your research question into appropriate research methods and statistical techniques.
3. Working collaboratively with other students on points 1 and 2.

This assessment closely approximates how actual researchers approach the writing of research proposal by including a collaborative component to this assessment.

We understand that this might sound a little daunting, and we don’t expect you to figure this all out for yourself. We will provide you with some sample readings on the basis of which you will develop your research question. Your tutor will also guide you through the skills you need and allocate time for you to work collaboratively on aspects of your proposal during the tutorials in Weeks 6, 8, and 10.

Especially given the collaborative nature of this assessment, we strongly recommend that you attend the tutorial program in person. This is because you will get immediate, in-person peer feedback and tutor support. Due to the collaborative nature of the activities, you cannot attend a different tutorial time each week. If you cannot attend your tutorial time (for extenuating circumstances only), you can do the following:

1. Arrange your own group on Cloud Deakin’s discussion board and meet during weeks 6, 8, and 10 at a time that best suits you all to work collaboratively on the assessment. You can decide whether you’d like to do this on campus or via Zoom. For safety reasons, please only meet on campus or Zoom (not some other location). In this time, you should collaboratively and systematically work through the tutorial guide corresponding to the week (i.e., week 6, 8, or 10). If you cannot attend the tutorial program in person, this is the next best option.
2. If you absolutely cannot attend the tutorial program in person or arrange your own group, you may complete the assessment individually. If you choose this option, you can simply work through the tutorial guide corresponding to the week on your own.

If you choose either of the above options, then we advise you to reach out through the discussion board for 1) peer feedback 2) to ask questions of the unit staff.

You do not need to notify the unit team if you choose to take either of these options.

This guidelines document will contain all the information you need to complete AT3 successfully. So, please read this document thoroughly first when looking for information about AT3!

Topic Information

There are three provided readings for this assessment, which you will use to develop your research proposal. These readings are related to the Intergroup Relations, Humans and other Animals, and Inequality and Social Class lecture topics, respectively. You can find these readings on the reading list and in the AT3 folder on the unit site.

Reading 1: Casey, J.P., Vanman, E.J., & Barlow, F.K. (2025) Empathic conservatives and moralizing liberals: Political intergroup empathy varies by political ideology and is explained by moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 51, 678-700.

Reading 2:  Wilks, M., Crimston, C.R. & Hornsey, M.J. (2024) Meat and morality: The moral foundation of purity, but not harm, predicts attitudes toward cultured meat. Appetite, 197, 107297.

Reading 3:  Huo, R., Yang, S., Dong, C. & Chen, S. (2025) Perceived economic inequality inhibits pro-environmental engagement. British Journal of Psychology, 64(2), e12815.

Please note that you should select ONLY ONE of the readings as the basis of your assessment. Which reading you choose is entirely up to you, and there is no advantage to choosing one reading over another. We recommend that you read all three and then select the one which most appeals to you or which about which you have ideas for future research questions.

Completing Your Assessment

The Study Idea Before you start writing anything (!) you will need to come up with an idea for a study which will form the basis of your research proposal. As alluded to above, the research literature (at least ideally) builds upon previous work to expand and clarify our understanding of the phenomenon in question. Thus, your first task is to select one of the starting references and develop your own research question which builds upon the findings of that research. This will be your research proposal topic.

Can you choose your own topic? Well, yes and no. The way the assessment is designed, you will be responsible for devising your own research question. However, that research question must derive from one of the set readings. Every year, a student (or two) will ask if they can choose a topic that is different to the assigned one. We strongly discourage this. We have chosen the starting references so that they 1) are relevant to the content taught in this unit, 2) are suited to the skill level needed to achieve the intended learning outcomes, and 3) allow you to be assessed fairly against the rubric. Finally, we provide a lot of guidance throughout the unit to ensure you have all you need to write a great quality assignment. If you choose a different topic, you will be at a disadvantage because some of the guidance is topic specific. So in sum: please stick to the topics provided 

Before you begin writing, we also recommend that you review the Lectures from weeks 6-8. These are the lectures which address the topics covered in the starter readings, and knowing the general background to these topics will be beneficial in understanding the research literature and developing your research question.

Sections of this Assessment

An APA-style title page (not included in word count)

• This must be the first page of your assessment and be one page in length.
• You should also include a unique and descriptive title for your research proposal which identifies the IV/DV or conditions/outcomes.
  • The title should be appropriate to the scope of your proposed study (i.e. not overly broad/grandiose)
• Include the unit code, the assessment (i.e., AT3: Research Proposal), your name, your student identification number, and the final word-count.
• You should include a page number on each page of the assessment.

Many real research proposals (e.g., funding applications) require the authors to provide a clear and succinct summary of the main important points of the proposal. This is a little bit like an abstract for a research paper or proposal, but is 1) typically presented in a dot point format and 2) is more focused on the significance of the proposed research.

The summary/highlights section should begin on a new page, and contain the following components. Aim for 1-2 sentences per component:

• Introduces the specific topic area (avoid making this overly broad, make it specific to the topic).
• Identifies the importance/necessity of the proposed research project
• Identifies the key population/s the findings have implications for
• Concludes with major contribution of your proposed research project
  • Contributions can be practical, empirical, or theoretical (ideally, practical and empirical theoretical)

There is no need to include citations in this section.

Introduction 

It is important that your question builds upon the starting reference sensibly and expands our understanding of the topic question in a significant manner. It should meaningfully progress the literature on the topic, and it should have translational impact on the broader community. Given this, your introductory section will do the following:

• Provide a critical and integrative review of relevant background literature including:
  • any relevant concepts, models, theories etc.
  • relevant empirical findings (including, of course, your chosen starting reference)
• Your literature review should serve the purpose of presenting an argument for your chosen research question and the study you have designed to test that question.

At the end of your introduction, you should build to a hypothesis or set of hypotheses. Unlike in HPS204, we will not prescribe what your hypotheses could be, or how many of them you should choose. This is up to you and will differ depending upon the research question you come up with. Remember that hypotheses are testable statements which predict the direction of the effect(s) you would observe if you were to run your proposed study. As such, your hypothesis(ses) should not predict 'no effect', no relationship between variables’, or ‘no difference between groups.

Handy hint. You will be working in collaborative groups to help you develop your research question and construct an evidence-based argument in your Week 6 and 8 tutorials, and once again, we strongly encourage attendance for the best possible performance on this assessment.

The Current Study (150-200 words, included in word count)

The current study section follows directly from your introduction. Having articulated an argument for your proposed study in the Introduction, the Current Study section will very briefly summarise the rationale for the study and what specifically your study is designed to do. It will contain:

• A brief restatement of what is known/not known about the study area
• A brief restatement of the rationale for your study
• A description of the aim of your study
• A restatement of the evidence-backed hypothesis/hypotheses

We recommend that you have between 1-2 aims/hypotheses.

Proposed Method (200-250 words, included in word count)

In this section, you will describe how you would conduct your proposed study. Here you will specify:

1. Participants: The target population (the population you want to target and recruit) and inclusion/exclusion criteria for participation.
2. Materials and Procedures:
   1. Procedure: a description of how you would conduct the study: what is your study design (experimental? observational?) and methods (online? In the lab?; what constructs will you manipulate or measure?; when/in what order will stimuli be presented and/or will measurements take place?)
   2. Materials: a description of the study's variables, how they will be operationalised and measured, any experimental stimuli, and/or questionnaires etc. that will be used in your study.
   3. You should draw on prior literature wherever possible to identify and justify appropriate (reliable and valid) methodology.

N.B. For the purpose of this assessment, a qualitative study design is not appropriate (see data analysis plan below)

Statistical Analyses (150-200 words, included in word count)

Here you will describe the statistical analysis techniques that you believe will be appropriate to analyse the data you propose to collect and to answer your proposed research question. This will include:

1. A statement of the statistical technique(s) (e.g., multiple regression, repeated-measures ANOVA)
2. A statement of the role of each of your variables in that analysis (e.g., independent variable, mediator).
3. A justification for why the technique you have chosen is appropriate for your study design.

N.B. For the purposes of this assessment, you should not choose a design that requires more complex data analysis techniques (e.g., multi-level modelling, structural equation modelling). If you believe your proposed question requires those techniques, please consult your tutor about simplifying your research question.

Reference List (not included in the word count)

• This must start on a new page after the statistical analysis section
• It must include all the references you used in this assessment. Do not include references you may have read but have not cited in text.
• The references must be formatted according to 7^th edition APA style and include all the relevant information.

Assignment readings to use (and source)

In this assessment there is no specific requirement regarding which references/the number of references you use. It is up to you to source an appropriate number of references to support your study rationale and adequately review the relevant existing literature.

The only constraint is that you must base your research question on one of the provided readings (see above), and as such you will be required to cite your selected reading.

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