PSY8540 Research Report

Write a brief research report (up to about 7 pages, not including title page, abstract, and references), based on an analysis of the data file (DATA540.SAV in Resources). These data were collected online. There are 200 male participants and 200 female participants, each in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender. The participants were asked questions about themselves and they were also asked questions about their romantic partner.

They answered the following information about both themselves and their partner:
Gender, Occupation, Annual Income, Age, Education.

They answered the following questions only about themselves:
Financial comfort (1=Comfortable, 2=Struggling), Home Zip Code, Type of Relationship (Married, Long-Term Committed, etc.), Relationship Happiness (1-5 scale).

They also responded to three scales measuring dimensions of financial personality. These scales each have 12 items that are rated from 1 to 5, so the scores can range from 12 to 60:
Lifestyle (L): The degree to which the participant seeks a luxurious, free-spending lifestyle.
Dependence (D): The degree to which the participant looks to others for financial support.
Risk-Taking (R): The degree to which the participant is comfortable with financial risks in investments and career.

You can see the survey online at this link:

http://moneyworkbook.com/finpers.htm

Choose a hypothesis, cite at least three references to justify your hypothesis, test your hypothesis with an analysis of the data, and then report and discuss the results.

Use APA format, including an abstract, introduction, method, results, and discussion section. An outline of this format can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMRAD

Here are the steps you would go through to write your report.

1) Look over the file variables and come up with a tentative question that could be answered by analyzing those variables. Search the literature (scholar.google.com and the school’s data base subscriptions are easy ways to do this) for support of your question. Look for support of similar questions, and then use this as an argument for your hypothesis. If you can’t find literature that supports your hypothesis, try another hypothesis.

2) EXAMPLE: I think that there might be a relationship between lifestyle expectations and relationship happiness. In other words, perhaps relationship discord is caused by having unrealistic expectations of an extravagant lifestyle.

Searching the literature, I find this article:

R. A. Easterlin. (2001). Income and happiness: Toward a unified theory. The Economic Journal. 465-483.

which suggests that high material expectations reduce happiness. This supports my hypothesis. My contribution will be to see whether high material expectations also affect relationship satisfaction.

Hypothesis: A desire for a more lavish lifestyle is associated with reduced relationship happiness.

3) In my Method section, I’ll describe the demographic characteristics of my sample and how the data were collected.

4) In the Results section, I’ll describe the results of my SPSS analysis. The correlation between relationship happiness (HAPPY) and lifestyle (L) is: r = -.143, df =398, p < .001.

5) I might want expand on this result. I could see if the correlation was different for males vs. females or for married vs. unmarried participants. I could also add a figure or table to clarify the results.

6) In the discussion section, I would say whether my hypothesis was confirmed. In this case it was; if it were not, I could explain why I thought it wasn’t. I would go on to speculate about the implications of my findings, and to suggest future research.

Aim for simplicity and clarity. A research report is only useful if your readers understand it.