Experiment Proposal Assignment
Overview. Each individual student submit a brief proposal for an experiment that addresses a topic in consumer behavior. See rubric for further details.
Initial Experiment Proposal Assignment: Your proposal should address the following points:
1. What general topic or research question would this study address? (Example: improving consumer satisfaction)
2. What prediction or hypothesis do you have? (Example: people are happier in situation X than in situation Y even though their objective outcome is equivalent in the two situations because they have different reference points.)
3. What methods do you propose? Be as specific as you can here. Remember that our study is going to be an on-line survey, so that methods have to be things we can do in an on-line survey. Presenting hypothetical scenarios and asking respondents what they would decide would work fine. Giving participants actual foods to eat, however, would not work for this study. If you are proposing that we present participants with some scenarios, write a draft of a scenario or two that we might use.
4. What is the experimental design? That is, what will you be experimentally manipulating? (Example: presenting a low vs. high reference point before offering people a choice between X vs. Y. The reference point would be the experimental manipulation.) Your proposal needs to be an experiment, not a correlational design. Your experimental variable cannot be a participant level variable (e.g., gender, income, race). How many different groups of subjects will we need for the study design? What will each individual subject see, and what response will they be asked to give? Within- or between-subject comparison?
5. What results do you expect if your hypothesis is correct? You might draw a graph here with made-up numbers that show the results pattern you expect.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.