Exposure Therapy on Social Anxiety Disorder

The Phantom Experiment will apply what you have learned to a topic in psychological or sociological research that you have some interest in.

Decide on a topic and design an experiment to test a related hypothesis. You are not actually conducting the experiment, hence the title Phantom Experiment! You will however, write up a research report as if you did, writing in the past tense.

The report will include most of the essential pieces of a report that you have learned about already: abstract, introduction, method, and references sections. There is no results section since you don’t really have any and the abstract won’t have a summary of the results as well.

Review the section on experiments in your text and be sure that your effort is indeed in the form of a proper experiment – not a survey or observational research project. This means you will be identifying at least two variables, controlling the IV (independent variable) and measuring the DV (dependent variable). You must also consider any “third variable” problems. You will need to operationalize your definitions. You will need to show some way of random assignment.

This must be an experiment that could actually be performed at present. Even though it is a Phantom Experiment, it must be ethical and employ the Belmont guidelines. The methods section should be sufficiently specific as to allow for replication. Since it is a Phantom Experiment, your budget for experimental equipment or other set-up costs is large. You can imagine a participant pool of appropriate size.

Typical format rules apply: APA format, one inch margins, doubled spaced with 12 point font. You are to include a title page and at least two references to relevant research from peer-reviewed sources. Avoid quotes. There is no specific word limit. Write as much as necessary to do the assignment. Typically this is 850-1000 words.

The grading is based on the following criteria:

Overall assessment – coherent? Well-written?
Organization – Clear or confusing?
1. Abstract
2. Introduction

Variables
1. specified
2. operationalized

APA format
1. Reference Section
2. Main paper

Number of References

Feasibility of Experiment
1. How likely is it that the experiment could be run?

Extraneous/Confounding Variables
1. Shouldn’t be any

Participants
1. Detailed explanation with numbers?

Procedure
1.Clearly and precisely explained

Correct Spelling, Grammar, and Punctuation