FINAL EXAMINATION GUIDE IN EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY (RESEARCH

EXAMPLE)

I. IDENTIFICATION (1 point each)

a. It is the systematic noting and recording of events. Observation
b. It has equal intervals between all its values and an absolute zero point. Ratio
Scale
c. It is a descriptive record of a single individual’s experiences, or behaviors, or
both, kept by an outside observer. Case Study
d. It is an average squared deviation. Variance
e. In this sampling method, the researcher locates one or a few people who fit
the same criterion and asks these people to locate or lead them to additional
individuals. Snowball Sampling
f. It refers to the particular behavior we expect to change because of our
experimental treatment. Dependent Variable
g. It specifies the precise meaning of a variable within an experiment.
Operational Definition
h. In a research report, this part cites all the sources mentioned in the research.
References
i. This occurs when the treatment conditions affect each other. Carryover
Effect
j. This procedure is used to distribute the effects of progressive error so that if
we average across subjects, the effects will be the same for all conditions of
the experiment. Across-Subject Counter Balancing

II. ENUMERATION (1 point each)

a. List down the seven (7) correlation and correlation-based research designs.
1. Path Analysis
2. Cross-Legged Panel Designs
 3. Multiple Correlation
4. Linear Regression Analysis
5. Correlation
6. Factor Analysis
7. Multiple Regression Analysis
b. List down the five (5) characteristics of an experimental hypothesis.
1. Synthetic Statement
2. Testable Statement
3. Falsifiable Statement
4. Parsimonious Statement
5. Fruitful Statement
c. List down four (4) types of nonprobability sampling.
1. Quota Sampling
2. Convenience Sampling
3. Purposive Sampling
4. Snowball Sampling
d. List down three (3) potential sources for decreasing the internal invalidity in
an experiment.
1. Testing
2. Selection bias
3. Regression to the mean
e. List down four (4) levels of measurement used in research.
1. Nominal Scale
2. Ordinal Scale
3. Interval Scale
4. Ratio Scale
f. List down five (5) basic questions that we must answer in selecting
appropriate statistical test for an experiment.
1. How many independent variables are there?
2. How many treatment conditions are there?
3. Is the experiment run between- or- within-subjects?
4. Are the subjects matched?
5. What is the level of measurement of the dependent
variable?
g. List two (2) factors that may influence statistical conclusion validity.
1. Violating the assumption of a statistical test
 2. Computing too many test

III. ESSAY (2 points each)

a. Explain the ANOVA as a statistical procedure.
According to the book, ANOVA is procedure used
being used in statistics, when the goal is to evaluate
differences among three or more treatment means and to
determine if there are relationship exists between them. It
has a process of splitting the collected variables in the
research data. This was done in order to determine the
effect that independent variable have on the dependent
variable. To further understand, ANOVA was described as
an extension of the t- and z-test.
b. How do we choose our statistical significance?
Having statistical significance is important for
academic disciplines or practitioners that rely on analyzing
data and research. If the question meant is how we chose
statistical significance level. We need to be sensitive when
it comes to choosing statistical level, for when we chose a
too high level, the test may fail, if we chose a too low level,
there might have a lot of false improvements after. We
need to interpret the results attentively and accurately, this
where phrases and correct result will be formulates. After
look for the probability of your research being false and
form a standard rule lastly, have experience so that we will
be able to know where to put importance in the future.
c. Discuss the benefits of a discrete trials design.
 Discrete Trial design is often used in psychophysical
research, such as in the area of perception,
psychophysics, motor behavior and even some forms of
judgement and decision making. This process requires for
a specific trial to be repeated as many as the experimenter
can, and a subject who experienced a repeated trials can
give a more reliable result on how the independent variable
affects the subject. Another benefits of using discrete trial
design are that the method is easy and simple thus making
the experiment possible to be repeated a lot of times. Also,
this method requires fewer subject which makes it easier
for the experiment to be conducted.
d. What requirements must be met to make the within-subjects approach
feasible?
Within-subject approach is feasible if the study needs
to have a more than one experimental condition, or the
subjects must undergo different condition of an
experiment in order to improve the power of experiment.
Basically, within-subject design is being used if the data
that will be require are much more and accurate when the
subject are face with different experimental condition.
There are some studies that actually requires the
application of within-subject design, since some
experiment will have a stronger or more accurate effect to
the subject if they are face with two or more condition
instead of having different subject in different condition.
 Also, it requires for the independent variable to be the only
variable that changes systematically.
e. Why anonymity and confidentiality of research participants and responses
important in research?
Data that is required in research study are sometimes
requires more personal information than not. Research
studies are also being conducted with a purpose of giving
knowledge for others thus it is not unknown that it can be
access by a lot of individuals. Anonymity and
confidentiality are one of the leading etiquettes that a
researcher must apply, the identity of the respondents
might be at risk if exposed in the study, it might affect the
personal life of the respondents or it might affect the
quality of the data collected form the respondents if they
we’re not informed of the confidentiality of their identity
within the study. No matter how you look at it, giving
respondent’s identity will do more trouble and
complication than not. It is also their rights to have their
identity and the data they provided to be confidential, it
should only e used in research purposes in order to avoid
personal conflict between the respondents and the
researcher.
f. Explain external validity and internal validity and their importance in research.

Both Internal and external validity are concepts that

reflect whether or not the results of a research study are
trustworthy, valid and meaningful. A research study will be
considered as internally valid when the researcher is
 certain that the changes that occurs within the subject or
the experiment are caused by the differences in treatments
and reflects that a given study makes it possible to remove
other explanations for the result or it should have no other
explanation applicable. It can give us how confident we can
be with the findings of our study. While External validity
refers to how generalizable the findings of the study are. It
will show us how well the outcome of a study can be when
apply to other settings. They are both factors that should
be considered when designing a study, because both have
implications in terms of whether the results of a study have
meaning. That is why it is important in research to know if
the study make sense or not.

g. What is/are the purpose/s of the review of related literature in a research?

Review of related literature is stationed in the
introduction part of a written report, thus the main purpose
of RRL is to introduce the reader to what would be the
research all about. It is to inform the readers of what are
the possible information they will encounter along the
whole report. It also has a purpose for the researcher, it
will give them more information about their topic, thus
making them more knowledgeable of their study. This will
also provide them of the consistency of the results and
information that they are able to gather which would help
them to create their hypothesis more accurately.
h. How does the reactivity of subjects influence the external validity of an
experiment?
 Reactivity of subjects is one of the threats to external
validity that is actually being commonly faced by
researchers. When we say reactivity, it is basically the
reaction of the subject, how they react to the experiment
conditions. It become a threat to the external validity of a
research when a reactivity arrangement is to happen, it is
when the subjects are changing their behavior because
they knew they are participating in an experiment, they are
not acting normally as what they always are. This situation
can affect the ability of your data to be generalize, because
the reactions from the participants are not the genuine or
the real reaction that you needed for your research. This
could be very risky for external validity. As well as to the
reliability of you research itself.

i. What should be described in a good title?

A good title should be descriptive that it already will
give idea to the reader of what the title would be about. If
one wanted to have a good title, the book says that
researcher can include both the dependent and
independent variables in the title, the relationship between
them should be included. Lastly a good title does not
require a lot of words, it should be concise but not lacking
of heads up information.
j. What is a scientific writing style?
Scientific writing style has a unique style compare to
other writings. It is the style that a requirement in writing a
research report, its goal is to recount all the details about
 the conducted study. Scientific should be filled with facts,
and no other extraneous and unnecessary information. It is
also considered a one of a highly structured and more
concise style of writing. The most important characteristic
of scientific writing style is that should be written
objectively but at the same time interesting and lively.
Another important point is the structure should be
parsimonious, scientific writing should be as simple as it
can be. This style also includes unbiased and nonsexist
language, this is so that the formality and effectiveness of
the information are maintained.

IV. APPLICATION (40 points)

a. Choose a topic below. Make a research proposal.
i. Homophobia /
ii. Phobia /
iii. Nonverbal communication
iv. Attraction, romance, and love /
v. Eating disorder /
vi. Antisocial personality disorder /
vii. Reality therapy
viii. Dreams /
ix. Speech disorder
x. Child abuse /
xi. Parenting style /
xii. Resilience /
xiii. Learning disabilities /
b. Students will not be allowed to choose the same topic.
 Holy Infant College
College of Liberal Arts
Tacloban City

A Quantitative Study on the Effectiveness of Reality Therapy on the

Female High School Student with Anxiety Studying in Holy Infant
College

Submitted to Ruby Anne Villafranca-Reglo, RPm

Faculty – AB Psychology
College of Liberal Arts
Holy Infant College, Tacloban City

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements in

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

RESEARCHER

Soriano, Ria Joy G.

June 2021
 Chapter I

Introduction

Anxiety is one of the leading mental health issues among adolescent

today. We may not be aware that the people around us are already being

driven by anxiety. Stress is something that causes anxiety or depression, it

can come from schooling, church, or even at home. Porwal & Kumar (2014)

stated that there are lot of stress related to studies, home works, test and

other academic competitions. According to Gordana (2017) going to high

school carries a certain burden that increase the students’ stress levels and

influence the development of anxiety disorders.

As the pandemic persist, a lot of study had been conducted and it has

proven that this pandemic can cause disturbance to students’ mental

health. Thus, the usage of different therapies for mental health were

currently getting attention. The aim of this study is to evaluate the

effectiveness of reality therapy towards students who had high level of

anxiety. Reality therapy is a client-centered form of cognitive

behavioral psychotherapy which focuses on improving present

relationships and circumstances, it is a therapy that avoids discussion of

past events. It is effective for helping students who need to face the current
situation thus the question of the effectivity of this therapy towards anxiety

during pandemic emerged.

Research Problem

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectivity of reality

therapy to the female high school student with anxiety. Specifically, this

research aims to answer the following problem:

1. How effective is reality theory on the female high school

students with anxiety?

2. What is the effect of reality theory towards female high school

students with anxiety?

Rationale

It has always been timely to study anxiety among adolescent. Now

that the current situation of COVID-19, the challenges related to the impact

on students' mental health continue beyond this phase of the pandemic

(Thakur A. (2020). And anxiety is one of the leading mental health issues

among high school student. In order to have more knowledge on how to

lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the mental health of the
female high school students, this research study aims to explore on how

effective is the reality therapy towards female high school students with

anxiety.

Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

When adolescents are not able to successfully overcome the crisis

and the developmental challenges, they will experience psychological

distress (Garber J. et al.) and will occur significant disruption in the normal

flow of everyday life and aspects of emotional, social and cognitive

development of which following their personality will be confused and

anxiety is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in adolescence.

Although it can’ t be said that the knowledge in this field is not developing,

in contrast the appropriate adjustment strategies for adolescent are actually

lacking thus resulting to disastrous consequences consist of abnormalities,

insecurity feeling, personality, affective and behavioral problems. World is

ever changing, adjustment is an important phenomenon in the life of human

being (Verma & Kumari, 2016). Human as an individual were required to

adapt in order to survive. According to Paul (2004) this adjustment should

be able to change, modify and can offer restraints in the tensions effectively

and this actually is very important for adolescent who faces stresses.

There are huge number of educational and psychological researches

on anxiety and adjustment (Rezazadeh & Tavakoli. 2009). Those studies

find out a result that there is a meaningful difference between males and

females considering the rate of test anxiety, and was found out that girls

were more anxious than boys when it comes to school performance.

Thakar & Modi (2014) found that there is a significance difference in

relation between boys and girls school students with reference to overall

adjustment and they also found a significance relationship between

difference overall adjustment and academic achievement of school

students. The study of Makwana and Kaji (2014) explored that there is

significant mean difference in social adjustment of secondary school

students in relation to their gender, boy students were found more adjusted

than girls.

There are a lot of therapeutic approaches and reality therapy is

known more than other approaches when working with adolescents in

educational settings. The main objective of reality therapy approach is

helping people to be aware of their needs, monitoring behavior, and

appropriate decision makings. This therapy is based on choice and control

theory and considers the cause of psychological problems in the choice of

individuals and the lack of responsibility of the individuals or satisfying its

own needs (Reynolds N. et al. 2013).

A study about the effectiveness of reality theory towards students

with anxiety had showed that the reality therapy has improved adjustment

in students with anxiety, specifically, teaching reality therapy is effective on

three subscales according to the study, these are the emotional

adjustment, social adjustment and academic adjustment. According to this

study, this result was in consistent with other studies such as the study of

Mehrbakhsh which concluded that the reality therapy was indeed effective

towards emotional, social, and educational adjustment. Emotional

adjustment is considered as coordination between feelings, activities,

thoughts, and good mental health, a maintenance of emotional equilibrium

in the face of internal and external stressors (Emotional adjustment. N.d.).

Emotions may hamper the studies of students and occupations of people,

emotional control and management is very essential for an adjusted life.

Acceptance of responsible behavior is one of the main components of

reality therapy that is related to emotional adjustment and mental health of

adolescents (Rahimi J. et al. 2007) and reality therapy just happened to

emphasis on the acceptance of responsibility and meeting the basic needs

will lead to more self-awareness. In relation to social adjustment, the study

had shown that it can be affected with the features of reality therapy which

are based on comprehension, responsibility and meet of needs, the reality

therapy enhances the emotional perception of individuals and this establish

a social and affective relations and expression of organized functioning

empathy for person. In explanation of educational adjustment, it is known

that anxiety can cause individual not be able to establishment of

communication with others and don’t consider any responsible for

himself/herself (Wubbolding RE. 2000). Reality therapy is an approach that

could apply for various problems of school and educational issues and this

approach is indeed a composition of existential believes and behavioral

techniques wherein has been very emphasized on responsibility and

control sense.
Conceptual Network

Reality Therapy Female High School

Students with Anxiety

Figure 1: The Conceptual Framework of the study.

Figure 1 illustrates the effectivity of reality therapy to the adjustment

of female high school students with anxiety.

Limitations

The research includes the effectivity of reality therapy to student with

anxiety, but is limited to female students studying in Holy Infant College.

The study was also limited to the effectiveness of the specific therapy to

high school adolescent, or those who are high school students, thus it limits

the data to be generalize among all the high school student.

Operational Definition

Reality Therapy

The term reality therapy used in this study was defines as a form of

counseling that views behaviors as choices (Nunez, K. 2021). A client-

centered form of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy that focuses on

improving present relationships and circumstances. It states that

psychological symptoms occur not because of a mental health condition,

but due to people choosing behaviors to fulfill their needs.

Adjustment

The world is always change with diverges (Tamannaeifar & Nezhad,

2014). Each and every individual is required to adapt and adjust to these

diverge changes in order to benefit a balanced life in better ways. The term

adjustment is often used as adaption and accommodation which is a

popular expression used by people (Makwana and Kaji, 2014) in our daily

life to physical environment as well as to social, emotional and so on. In

this study term adjustment was used as a person’s level of psychological

adaptation, settlement in his or her surrounding environment. Adjustment

as a stable condition of life when humanity is more or less in harmony with

personal, biological, emotional, psychological, social and educational

needs and with the demands of the atmosphere (Alam & Halder, 2017).

Chapter III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Design

This study employs quantitative research design that involves

gathering of numerical data regarding on the effectivity of reality theory on

the adjustment of female high school students with anxiety. The research

was semi-experimental with pre - test and post - test design with control

group in two experimental and control groups. Used tools in this study

were, the "anxiety, stress, depression scale" and "Adjustment Inventory for

School Students, Sinha and Singh". The Depression, Anxiety, Stress

Scale, DASS by Loviandand Loviand, (1995) was used in order to measure

the severity of main symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress to the

students. A simple scale question that has 42 items adapted from DASS

Psychology Foundation of Australia (Manual for the Depression Anxiety

Stress Scales. (2nd. Ed.). Adjustment inventory include 60 questions and

options of each question have been designed as yes or no, it was

published by Sinha and Singh but was adapted from the study of

Vahidiborji G and his group (Vahidiborji G, et al. 2017).

Participants

The participants of this research study are limited to a female

individual to avoid unnecessary data and to further the accuracy of the

result. The study has fifty (50) high school students that studying in Holy

Infant College in Tacloban City.

Sampling Design

This study used purposive sampling a method in choosing the

participants. Characteristic set by the researcher will further the accuracy of

the data gathering. The participants should be female and a high school

student studying in Holy Infant College Tacloban City.

Procedure

The sampling method in the first stage has been performed based on

purposive available sampling method. Therefore, the Depression, Anxiety,

Stress Scale or DASS 21 questionnaire was distributed to all students and

the filled questionnaires that their anxiety score was up to seven (7) were

selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups.

The experimental group received eight sessions of two (2) hours reality

therapy. To complete the questionnaire, individual must identify the state of

a symptom during last week before the experiment.

Data Analysis

Adjustment Inventory is a questionnaire that seeks to discriminates

the female high school students with good adjustment from students with

poor adjustment in three areas: emotional, social and educational. Data

that has been gathered were analyzed using SPSS software and analysis

of covariance.
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Adolescent with Anxiety - MedCrave online. Accessed from: The
Study of Effectiveness of Reality Therapy on Adjustment of Female
Adolescent with Anxiety - MedCrave online

In God’s Mercy, We Serve with Joy!

Prepared by:

Ruby Anne Villafranca-Reglo, RPm

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