Please refer to attached files for Assessment details and additional relevant files for completion of the work. Lab Report
General Information
1. Please write up Abstract, Introduction, Data Analysis Approach aspect of the Method section, Results, Discussion, References and provide Appendix A & B as per Assessment handout.
2. Hypothesis: It is hypothesised that political orientation will moderate the relationship between a humourous monologue about climate change consensus and pro-climate intentions. (Feel free to change/amend/adjust this hypothesis if you feel it necessary for academic standard, general reading clarity or a more succinct presentation).
3. Please ensure 12 references include those listed in the Assessment handout when/if applicable.
4. References listed in Assessment handout have been provided.
5. Please provide Volume numbers for all references used.
6. Please note: Word count includes in-text citations.
7. One SPSS data file has been provided (have also included original Excel spreadsheet containing data provided to students).
8. Names & Labels for all Variables already completed. No need for any changes/updates.
9. Data needs to be screened, evaluated, assessed and cleaned up by checking assumptions relating to regression analysis (including outliers, missing data, normality, linearity, homoscedacity and interdependence, and multicollinearity).
10. A Mediation Analysis is to be included in the SPSS screening process (as Mediation is the basis of the Lab Report).
11. Please ensure all SPSS output resulting from data screening/cleaning, assumption testing processes and all analysis is provided as this forms part of the Assessment submission (refer Assessment handout).
12. Please do not hesitate to come back to me with questions or clarification.
Details of task: This assessment task requires you to complete a psychology lab report in APA 6th style. The
hypothetical study assesses the effect of humour in climate change information messaging on intention to engage
in pro-climate action, and whether political orientation moderates this relationship. You will complete a brief review
of the literature on this topic, and generate one or more hypotheses based on this review. You will then create an
SPSS data file using the data provided, clean your data and test assumptions for relevant analyses, conduct
descriptive and inferential analyses to test your hypotheses, and report and interpret your results.
Assignment Details
Context:
Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus among climate scientists that climate change is a serious
threat, a substantial portion of the population, particularly in the U.S., deny the existence of humaninduced
climate change (Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Hmielowski, 2012; Pidgeon, 2012).
Furthermore, the issue appears to be politically-polarised, with left-wing adherents (liberals) less likely to
deny climate change than right-wing adherents (conservatives; Hornsey, Harris, Bain & Fielding,
2016). Unfortunately, simply providing people information about climate change and the scientific
consensus does not appear to reduce climate change denial on average, and can in fact result in a
stronger rejection of climate change by conservatives (Cook & Lewandowsky, 2016).
However, only certain types of climate change messaging have been used in past studies, with messages
typically text-based or a combination of text and graphics. One possibility to increase support for climate
change action is to use humour as a delivery method. Humour has been used in previous studies in
environment research with some promising results (Vande Velde, Hudders, Cauberghe & Claerebout,
2018). Nonetheless, it is possible that common types of humour dealing specifically with current political
issues, such as late night television shows (e.g. The Daily Show; This Week Tonight) also have a polarising
effect on climate change beliefs and actions.
Furthermore, less work has been conducted on examining the effects of such interventions on climate
change behavioural intentions, which are crucial to understand given the need for personal and political
action on the issue. Behavioural intentions may include intending to vote for politicians who pledge to
support pro-climate policies.
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As such, an experimental study was designed to examine the effect of a humourous piece about climate
change consensus by a late night television comedian on pro-climate intentions, and whether political
orientation moderates this relationship.
In this assignment you are required to create a data file for the provided data, and produce a lab report
that includes the following sections:
Title and Abstract
Aim to produce a catchy yet professional title for your paper. Your abstract should be approximately
150 words in length (not included in your word limit) and should provide a succinct summary of the
report overall (i.e. all sections should be represented in the Abstract).
Introduction
The Introduction should concisely summarise the literature you have reviewed on the topic, providing
the reader with a background and the existing research evidence. When preparing your report, bear
in mind that you will need to report on your assumption testing and major analyses (in later sections),
so there is a need for you to write concisely in this section. One way to do this is to synthesise the
results of several studies together rather than reporting on individual studies. In total, your
Introduction should be no longer than 300-350 words.
Your research hypothesis should also be included in your Introduction. Hypotheses should be
concise and logically related to the literature reviewed in the Introduction. Your goal is to write one or
more hypotheses that are clear, logical, and testable – and if the reviewed literature supports it –
directional.
Method
In this section, you will need to report: Participants and Recruitment; Measures; Procedure; and Data
Analysis Approach. Use the following scenario information to assist you with the Method section.
Anna is an Australian early career researcher and has received a small grant to examine the effects of
climate change information messages on intention to support pro-climate policy. She is particularly
interested in whether a humourous message about climate change consensus increase pro-climate
intentions. Suspecting a possible polarisation effect (i.e. the message may increase climate intentions
for liberals but decrease them for conservatives), she is also interested in whether this relationship
differs across the political spectrum. She decides to conduct an online survey, randomly assigning
participants to one of two experimental conditions. In each condition, participants are presented with
a short (3.5-4.5 minute) YouTube clip of U.S. comedian John Oliver on his TV show “Last Week
Tonight”. In the treatment condition, Oliver presents a humourous take on the current state of the
climate change debate, that is, that scientists are not adequately represented in the media and the
issue is treated as if it is debated among climate scientists (link to clip here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg). In the control condition, participants watch a
John Oliver clip that is unrelated to climate change and politics (link to clip here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjatG8QFoOk). To measure pro-climate action intentions, she
uses Bateman and O’Connor’s (2016) climate action intentions measure.
After receiving ethics approval from the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee, Anna
recruited participants via TurkPrime, which is an online participant recruitment platform based in the
U.S. She pays participants a small amount ($1USD) for their participation. Interested participants on
TurkPrime who clicked on the link were directed to the study’s site on the survey-hosting platform,
Qualtrics. First they read the Explanatory Statement explaining the general purpose of the study, risks
and benefits of participating, and assuring participants their participation was voluntary, confidential,
and anonymous. Participants gave their implied consent to participate in the study by completing the
survey’s measures, including key demographics (age, gender), indicating their political orientation
from liberal (left) to conservative (right) on a single item 11pt scale; and Bateman and O’Connor’s
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(2016) Climate Action Intention scale, which ranges from 1 to 7 (7-pt Likert scale). Higher scores on
the Climate Action Intention scale indicate a higher intention to engage in pro-climate action such as
voting for politicians who want to protect us from climate change.
Anna kept the following notes about the internal reliability of the Climate Action Intention
scale (Cronbach’s alpha = .84); this measure’s score was computed by summing its individual item
scores.
Anna also made some notes explaining how the coding of the experimental conditions was entered
into the dataset in this particular study. Participants with a “1” for the “experimental condition”
variable viewed the climate change content clip (treatment), and participants with a “0” for the
“experimental condition” variable viewed the regifting clip (control).
Other variables in the dataset (beyond those explained above such as political orientation,
experimental condition and climate action intention) include age and gender. You will need to report
on the average age of the sample as well as the gender breakdown in your participants section.
Gender is coded as follows: 1 = Male, 2 = Female, 3 = Not listed (please specify) and 4 = Prefer not to
say. No participants selected “Not listed” therefore there is no “please specify” text-based information
to consider here.
Results
In this section, you will need to report: Data Cleaning and Assumption Testing; Preliminary Analyses
(such as descriptive statistics); and Hypothesis Testing Analyses (specifically, moderation analysis
using Hayes’ PROCESS macro in SPSS). Reporting the details of the assumption tests should be
concise yet informative enough to demonstrate any violations and your decision-making process
regarding how these were addressed.
Discussion
In this section, you will need to describe and interpret your results in plain language, including
whether or not your hypothesis/hypotheses were supported. You will also need to evaluate (compare
and contrast) your results with reference to the literature reviewed in your Introduction. You should
also report on: Strengths and Limitations of the study, Future Research Directions (based on the
Limitations you describe), and consider the practical/real-world implications of your findings, and
provide a clear conclusion summarising the key points of your study.
References
Needs to include all cited sources in APA 6th-edition format.
Appendix A – Data File
Copy and paste screen shots of your data view and variable view into your assessment file. This will
allow your instructor to check that the data has been correctly entered and to see what changes have
been made to your data throughout your data screening/assumption testing process. The data has
been provided to you in the form of an Excel spreadsheet Comma Separated Values (.csv). This
spreadsheet can be imported into SPSS as it is, and can be saved as an SPSS file (.sav) for
subsequent use. It will be up to you to appropriately name and label the variables, as required. The
lab report’s Excel spreadsheet can be found here.
Appendix B – SPSS Syntax and Output
Export a full copy of your SPSS syntax and output and include this in your assessment file to
demonstrate your entire data analysis process. However, you only need to include the final output
that is relevant to your analysis. So really you should not have hundreds of pages of output to
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include. This appendix represents an opportunity to demonstrate your skill in working with SPSS files;
in particular, your instructor will consider your syntax and output to mark your competency in using
SPSS. These instructions show you how to export your output from SPSS as a Word document,
which you can then cut/paste content from into the Appendices of your Lab Report before saving the
overall document as a PDF.
Starting References:
These references should provide you with some information regarding the concepts alluded to in this
study, as well as findings regarding the relationships between key variables. The purpose of these
references is not to bog you down in loads of information. Remember that your introduction and
discussion sections are only 300-350 words each, so you do not have much room to be expansive.
Extract the key points and findings, and use these as a starting point to find other relevant articles.
Hart, P. S., & Nisbet, E. C. (2012). Boomerang effects in science communication: How motivated
reasoning and identity cues amplify opinion polarization about climate mitigation policies.
Communication Research, 39, 701-703.
Hornik, J., Ofir, C., & Rachamim, M. (2016). Quantitative evaluation of persuasive appeals using
comparative meta-analysis. The Communication Review, 19, 192–222.
Hornsey, M. J., Harris, E. A., Bain, P. G., & Fielding, K. S. (2016). Meta-analyses of the determinants
and outcomes of belief in climate change. Nature Clim. Change, 6(6), 622-626.
Lewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2016). Motivated rejection of science. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 25, 217-222.
Vande Velde, F., Hudders, L., Cauberghe, V., & Claerebout, E. (2018). Changing farmers’ behavior
intention with a hint of wit: The moderating influence of humor on message sidedness. Journal of
Environmental Psychology, 97-103.