Lab Report T3 2022 – Reading guide
What this guide is:
Being confronted with a whole host of readings introducing a topic can be quite
overwhelming, and it isn’t always clear where to start. This guide is intended to assist your
understanding of the research underpinning the current lab report. In sum, these readings
build up the arguments we use to eventually make the hypotheses we need to address the
research questions. This document is intended to help point out aspects of interest from the
readings and help keep your thinking organised. All texts are relevant to the overall study,
but you’ll find that some are more useful for generating questions rather than answers (i.e.,
“this paper tells me something, but not everything. Can I formulate a hypothesis that
address my research questions?).
How to use this guide:
The notes here are designed as prompts for points of interest to the current lab report. As
you read the reports, consider the notes here and think about how they might be useful for
addressing the research questions. Do the authors make arguments that you can use? Do
the authors give useful definitions? As you read, do you notice limitations (or “gaps”) that
your lab report could address?
What this guide is not:
This guide is not a substitute for reading the papers themselves, nor is it an exhaustive list of
every point of interest/relevance to the current lab report.
Do I need to find any more articles?:
The resources below are all you need for this lab report. While you are free to examine
other sources if you wish, you are not required to.
AIHW report
– This report will provide some information about psychological distress in Australia, and
would perhaps be a good way to introduce the importance of researching psych distress.
– Note that only the ‘Psychological Distress’ subsection of the report is relevant to your lab
report.
Mathieson and Crick, 2010.
– The authors define relational aggression and the subtypes most relevant to the current lab
report.
– The authors refer to a broad category of internalising problems (an umbrella term for
depressive, anxious, stress symptoms among other “internal” distress conditions), and
externalising problems (aggressive behaviours, antisociality, “acting out” etc.).
– The authors perform both cross-sectional analyses (analyses of variables all at the same
timepoint), and longitudinal analyses (variables at time one used to predict or correlate with
variables at time two). Consider if this can tell us anything about the constructs over time.
– Note what the authors conclude about the nature of gender and aggressive behaviours – it
might be useful for arguing why gender should be considered in analyses of relational
aggression.
– Don’t get caught up in trying to interpret every statistic that is reported. If something is
confusing, see if you can find where the analyses are discussed in the text.
Dahlen et al., 2013
– This article looks at relational aggression in a young adult (college) sample. How does this
differ from the other studies which look at a younger sample? Are the key constructs of
interest measured differently, and if so, does this impact our ability to generalise across the
studies?
– Both peer and romantic relational aggression are examined. For your lab report, only the
peer relational aggression is relevant.
Marshall et al., 2015
– This review and meta-analysis provides an overview of the association between relational
aggression and internalising problems (i.e., depression and anxiety) in youth samples.
– This review and meta-analysis also considers the role of possible moderators to the
association between relational aggression and internalising problems. Not all of these will be
relevant to the lab report, but some will be!