Essay PSYC2010: Psychological Research Methodology – Psychology Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:

During the lockdown in 2020, UQ asked the School of Psychology what might be done to support the mental health of our international students who were living alone in Australia. Not surprisingly, there are different theoretical orientations and approaches that could be adopted. When consensus could not be reached, the School used this as an opportunity to test the efficacy of three different approaches to improve the mental health of international students living alone during the lockdown. It’s the Battle of the Treatments!

An environmental psychologist, who does research on the restorative effects of nature, believes the remedy for improved mental health is spending time outdoors. A social psychologist, who studies the importance of social connections and belonging, focuses on social interactions to improve mental health. A clinical psychologist, with expertise in human-animal interactions, believes international students living alone should be given a pet from the RSPCA to improve their mental health. An experimental psychologist notes that a control condition (where participants only complete the mental health measure) should be included to help evaluate the efficacy of these various intervention approaches.

Before collecting any data, the researcher had three experimental hypotheses about the four mental health intervention conditions:
1. Participants in the control condition would have poorer mental health than participants in the other three conditions combined
2. Participants in the pet condition would have better mental health than participants in the nature condition and interaction condition combined
3. Participants in the interaction condition would have better mental health than participants in the nature condition