Initial Feelings on My Methods

Hello All:

Over the course of the past week or so, I have completed my methods assignment and gotten a much clearer vision for the direction of my research and methods. To remind anyone who is not familiar with my research, I am looking into the comparative influence of time pressure, near-misses, and priming on blackjack betting behavior.

My research presents a few challenges that I have to solve with my methods. First, I need to find participants for my study. The participants must be adults and there must be a lot of them, so I can split them into four groups (one for each effect and one for the control) and still have enough members of each group to yield meaningful results. I am a little nervous about that, but I am sure that if I start contacting potential subjects soon I can find people willing to participate.

Once I have the subjects, I need to make sure that their predispositions and biases do not affect my results and make them invalid, so I will have to survey them to understand their predispositions in regard to gambling history and riskiness. I have found a survey that has been researched thoroughly and shown to work, so I am thinking of sending it out to my subjects electronically and having them answer it before they come in to participate. Then, I can split them into groups that are representative of the population I am testing. Thus yielding more meaningful and valid results.

Once I get the subjects into my experiment, I need to find a way to standardize a measurement in order to judge the influences of each effect comparatively. I plan to do this by putting my subjects in the same situation; I will present them with an ambiguous hand of 15, which is shown to have no common betting practices and then measure how many times subjects hit or stay under each condition. I will also observe my subjects in order to gain a full perspective on the data. This standardized measure will allow me to compare the effects concretely. I will set up the situation by stacking the cards when the player is out of the room.

For each of the effects I need to vary the procedure slightly differently. I plan to have the dealer give the player a verbal three-second time limit for betting during the time pressure situation. To test the near-miss effect, I plan to set the cards up so the player should have one or two near misses prior to facing the ambiguous hand. I plan to prime the participant by showing them the number 6, which is needed to get 21, through pictures and quiet music and sounds throughout the experiment. I am a little nervous about the priming because I have to find the perfect balance of being discreet and being noticeable enough for the priming to work.

Overall my general experimental set up has me feeling pretty good. Like this confident baby.

But some of the logistical planning it is going to take has me feeling more like this baby.

I am a little nervous about trying to keep my subjects separate to avoid potential confounding variables of social interaction while gambling, which is a whole other study that needs to be done. I am also nervous about scheduling the experiments at times that work for me, my subjects, any volunteers I may need to help me, and the place that I will be doing the experiment in (ideally BASIS). Hopefully, I will get all the logistics figured out soon and it will all run smoothly. Then, I will be like this baby. (613)

Reflecting on the First Trimester

Hello All:

I'm back from my long hiatus. It has been a crazy year so far and my research has come along way. When I initially cam into AP research, I was pretty set on studying behavioral economics, specifically price anchoring. As I read more into price anchoring, I was still very fascinated with it, but I also found that research on the topic was saturated and there was not a lot for me to contribute to the field. Also, as I read into behavioral economics journals, I became more interested in time pressure, social factors, and subconscious factors that influence behavior.

Through all of my reading, I eventually came to the topic of gambling and behavioral influences of gambling. Although it is a lot different from my initial idea, I feel like I found an area that I can contribute to and am extremely interested in. After that, I had to start the lit review process and it left me looking a little like this.

At the start of the lit review, I was very lost on how to structure my argument. But as I read more, I began to realize that I had to explain all of the effects and relate them together. But that was not an easy task. The biggest problem I had with my lit review was my trouble putting my subtopics in conversation and justifying that the effects I chose were the most important to look at.

But through conversation with Mrs. Haag and my peer-review group, Kimy and Brian, I figured it all out. I had to create a new framework and add in more psychological elements in order to justify the effects that I used. 

Now that the lit review is done, I am excited to move on to the methods. I am currently thinking of using an observational study to understand the effects. I will need four groups: a control group and a group for each effect. I am a little nervous about trying to get a wide sample and a lot of people to participate in my study because without a wide variety of people, my results will not be meaningful. Hopefully, I can start reaching out to potential participants soon. As I read my literature, I will get a better sense of the specifics of my methods and create an experiment that will yield meaningful results.

Here is a meme to for reading the whole post. (417)