Assignment 2
Background:
You are part of a team of researchers who are interested in the effectiveness of biofeedback training on
the anxiety levels shown in university students. Your research team hopes to conduct a series of studies to
assess this. So far, your team has conducted one study in order to get some initial data that can then be
used to inform some additional experiments that they will carry out. As part of this research team, it is
your job to write a laboratory report on this experiment with a view to submitting it to a journal. You will
therefore need to write an Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion section. You also need
to provide your reference list. The word limit for your report is 2500 words (+/- 10%), which includes
everything except the reference list and appendices.
Task details and advice:
As always, the Introduction should build up a strong rationale for this study, culminating with the
specific aims and hypotheses of the experiment. As part of developing this rationale, you will need to
provide a review of relevant literature. Use as many relevant citations as you can to demonstrate that you
have read broadly. Try to use the research to build up your argument, rather than simply describing the
research. If you find conflicting evidence, by all means include it! Rather than it undermining your
argument, you can use it to argue for why more research is needed (i.e., the present experiment!). You
should also critically consider the research you refer to; have conclusions been made that aren’t warranted
by the evidence? Have they had methodological flaws which places doubt on their conclusions? If so,
include this in your review of the literature. Your hypotheses should extend clearly from the rationale you
have developed. Do not change your hypotheses to match the results; what you hypothesize must extend
logically from your rationale in your Intro. It is perfectly acceptable to have results that do not support
your hypotheses.
Your Methods section will need to be comprised of four subsections: Design, Participants, Materials and
Procedure. If you are unsure what to include in these sections, you should consult a writing for
psychology guide, such as those written by Burton or O’Shea (copies available in the library).
The Results section should present all of the relevant data and statistical analyses in a concise manner.
You should use tables and figures where appropriate. Remember, tables should be used when you have a
lot of data that needs to be summarized as this is more concise than listing a large number of means and
standard deviations in text. If you are only referring to a couple of means/SDs, though, then these are ok
to go in the text. Alternatively, if you want to illustrate the relationship between several different means
then this is best done using a Figure (don’t forget to include SE as error bars). Make sure that you do not
present the same data in more than one format; this is redundant (e.g., do not present means and standard
deviations on a figure and then also report those same means and SDs in text). However, you do need to
refer to any tables or figures in text (e.g., “These means are presented in Table 1.” Or “As illustrated in
Figure 1…”). Your results section should tell your reader what you have found, but not include a
discussion of why these results occurred (i.e., leave interpretations to your discussion).
Your Discussion section is an extremely important part of your report. This is the section where you will
demonstrate to prospective readers (and, indeed, to your fellow research team, whom you wish to
impress!), that you have a clear grasp of the topic and the experiment itself. It is easy to leave this section
to the last minute, but a poorly crafted Discussion section must be avoided! Before writing this section,
you should spend time carefully considering your results and what they mean, and critically assessing
them. Did they support your hypotheses? If not, what are some possible explanations for this? Are your
results consistent with previous research? (Note: if you are finding this difficult to write about, chances
are you haven’t adequately reviewed the literature in your Intro – so go back and do this!) If your results
are not consistent with previous research, why might this be? Even if the results did support the
hypotheses, are there any alternative explanations for the results that cannot be ruled out (and thus
perhaps something that future research would need to investigate)? Are there any limitations of this study
that affect your ability to draw clear conclusions? Make sure that you understand specifically how any
limitations you propose might have affected your results and be able to explain this. Pointing out a
possible limitation without explanation how specifically it might have affected your results is not useful
(and will not receive any marks). In addition to thinking about limitations, think about some possible
implications of this study and how these results might be used to inform real-life problems (i.e., what are
some applications?). Also think about what contributions this study has made to understanding this
research area. Remember, your research team intends to conduct a whole series of studies examining this
topic. So, as part of your report, you should propose (briefly) some directions for future research. Often
this can be tied in well to a discussion of limitations, by proposing why it is important that future research
avoids these issues and how they might do so. Finally, you should present a conclusion. What are the
“take home messages” of this report? What has the experiment achieved? What are the key findings?
What are some of the potential benefits to continued research in this area (i.e., summarise the
applications)?
Throughout your whole report, you should take care to use 6th edition APA style, paying special attention
to the correct formatting of tables and figures, in-text citations, and your reference list. Since you are
writing this report on behalf of your research team, it is essential that your writing is of a very high
standard. This means you should ensure there are no spelling, typographical, grammatical, or punctuation
errors in your report. You should aim to use a clear, concise, academic style of writing throughout the
whole report. Pay close attention to the structure of your writing, particularly in the Introduction and in
the Discussion sections. Make sure that your arguments all flow logically from one another (hint: Use
linking sentences at the start of each paragraph! Use words like: Accordingly, Consequently, Conversely,
Additionally, However, Nevertheless…to direct your reader). To get the best flow of arguments, you will
often need to reorder points, even whole paragraphs, within a section before you get a final product that
reads well from start to finish.
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This document is not an exhaustive list of everything you need to include in each section of a lab report.
Instead, it aims to give you some direction and to point out the key features that students often miss. I
strongly advise that in addition to carefully following the hints in this document, you also use an APA
style guide and a writing in psychology guide (both accessible in the library and online).
The experiment
The participants were all final-year undergraduate university students. Your data output contains the
necessary participant details. The experiment was conducted over 10 weeks, where all participants
attended a one hour session on the university campus at the same time each week. Your research team
randomly allocated all of the participants to one of two groups: an “Intervention” group, and a
“Control” group.
Below are the procedure instructions that you research team used. Use this information to describe the
experimental procedure in your report, but do not copy it exactly. You must put it in your own words
(and, you should never number/list procedure in a lab report anyway). Don’t forget to write in past
tense, too!
To perform this experiment you will need the following apparatus and measures:
1. The shortened (21 item) Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21).
Test-retest reliability: r=.71 for depression, r=.79 for anxiety and r=.81 for stress.
Validity: Correlation of .81 between the DASS anxiety subscale and the Beck Anxiety Inventory
(BAI); correlation of .74 between the DASS Depression scale and the Beck Depression Scale (BDI).
The DASS-21 and its scoring sheet are attached here so that you can describe it properly in your
report.
2. “Wild Divine” multimedia biofeedback training software, installed on an HP laptop computer running
Windows 7.
3. “IOM” electronic biofeedback monitor ( model: HR001.1), comprised of three finger sensors (one to
measure heart rate, the other two to measure skin conductance level). Only the two skin conductance
sensors are used in this experiment.
Website for the Wild Divine software and OIM hardware: www.wilddivine.com
To perform this experiment you will need to follow these procedures:
Week 1
1. The experimenter should ask the participant to complete the consent form and answer any questions
about the experiment before proceeding.
2. The experimenter should ask the participant to complete the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale
(DASS), following the instructions given on this handout.
3. The experimenter should attach the sensors to the participant’s index and ring fingers of their nondominant hand to record electrodermal activity (“skin conductance level” (SCL)). The pads of their
fingers should rest comfortably inside the sensors with the flaps going over their fingernails.
4. Remind the participant to keep their hand as still as possible to minimize movement artefacts.
5. Wrap the participant’s hand in a soft cloth to keep the hand warm and promote sweat gland activity.
6. Ask your participant to relax quietly for 5 minutes while you record a baseline of their SCL. This
data will be recorded by the computer program.
7. Instruct your participant that they will now perform a test, in the form of a computer game, and that
you will be monitoring their performance. The task is a ‘car race’, where their goal is to beat the
other cars.
8. Instruct your participant that in this task, their car will go faster the more relaxed they are.
Conversely, the more anxious they are, the slower their car will go. Do not give your participant any
instructions on how to control their anxiety levels.
9. This task will take 5 minutes.
10. The computer program will record the participant’s mean SCL during the 5 minute test period.
Week 2 – 9
1. For the Intervention group, participants will spend one hour each week using the “Wild Divine”
Biofeedback training program. This program teaches participants to learn to control their body’s
physiological responses (specifically, SCL and heart rate) through breathing exercises and relaxation
skills. They receive real-time feedback on their SCL and heart rate (i.e., biofeedback) so that they can
track their performance.
Note: We have omitted more specific detail here, since you should be able to describe this part of
the procedure based on your own use of the equipment in class.
2. The control group simply attends their regular class time without the opportunity to engage in
biofeedback training.
Week 10
1. The procedures of Week 1 will be repeated here i.e., the participant will complete the DASS, followed a
baseline measure of mean SCL being recorded, followed by recording of the mean SCL during the Test
condition.
What does the data represent?
 Baseline measures of resting skin conductance level amplitude were taken at the start of each testing
session. (averaged over a 5 minute resting period).
 The mean skin conductance amplitude (in micro Siemens) were also measured during each testing
session. (averaged over a 5 minute test period using the Alive “car race” game).
 The change in skin conductance amplitude (i.e., increase or decrease relative to baseline) was also
calculated. This is the DV used in the analyses.
 Prior to data analysis, the skin conductance data was corrected for artefact by applying a low pass
filter with an upper cut-off frequency of 0.5Hz.
 The type of statistical analysis used was a split-plot ANOVA (SPANOVA) (also known as a “mixed
design ANOVA”). This type of analysis is used when there is both a between-group variable (such as
two different groups) and repeated-measures variable (such as when a measure is taken at two time
points).
o Look at the “tests of between-subjects effects” box for your between-groups IV (i.e., this will
tell you whether or not there is a significant overall, or main, effect of Group). Don’t forget to
report the direction of the effect (i.e., look at the overall means for your two-groups).
o Look at the “tests of within-subjects effects” box for your repeated-measures IV (i.e., this will
tell you whether or not there is a significant main effect of Time). Again, don’t forget to report
the direction of the effect (i.e., look at the overall means for your two time-points).
o You also need to take a look at the interaction between your IVs i.e., is there a difference in
the effect of time (i.e., the change from Time 1 to Time 2) on your experimental group
compared to the control group? Look again at the “tests of within-subjects effects” box to look
for whether or not there is a significant interaction between your two IVs.
o If there is, you need to follow this interaction effect up with some post-hoc t-tests to see where
the significant effect is. Were your two groups significantly different from one another at Time
1? What about at Time 2? (hint: for these two t-tests, you are comparing between groups).
Was there a significant difference between Time 1 and Time 2 for your experimental group, or
for your control group? (hint: for these two t-tests, you are comparing within groups).
o Once again, make sure you also report the direction of any effects by looking at the means.
Keep in mind you have 4 means that you are comparing here, so consider whether it is best to
present this data in-text, on a figure, or in a table.
 This analysis (i.e., a SPANOVA with two pairs of post-hoc t-tests) was also performed on the total
DASS score.

The DASS-21 is a measure that assesses three negative emotional states: Depression,
Anxiety and Stress (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995).
Number of items: 21 items (7 items for each emotional state).
Procedure/Administration: Self-report format consisting of statements referring to the
past week. Each item is scored on a 4-point scale (0 = Did not apply to me at all, to 3 = Applied to
me very much or most of the time).
How scored: Scores from each subscale are summed and multiplied by two. Subscale
score range from 0 to 42. Apply template to the answer sheet and sum scores for each scale. For
short (21-item) version, multiply the sum by 2.
Interpretability: Higher scores indicate greater levels of distress.