'We aim to...' for the aim and 'We believe that...' for the hypothesis.
we have vastly different teachers. our class has been given specific instructions not to use "I" or "we"
That's because Shinny hasn't done Psychology.
Different scientific disciplines (and different journals within scientific disciplines) have different rules in regard to how scientific papers (which an ERA is) are meant to be written. Psychology is governed by a style known as the
APA style. It's so strict, that every couple of years, the APA (American Psychological Association) actually put out a style guide book (so complex, that even the APA stuff it up - they had to reprint the 6th Edition because of errors), stating the rules for everything, from citations right down to how statistical data is meant to be reported, including the convention that every single letter representing a statistical test must be italicised (so,
t(40)= 4.23,
p < 0.05,
d=0.60, not t(40)=4.23, p < 0.05, d=0.60). It's quite anal, and no doubt the bane of every single Psychology student's existence. But, it must be used.
I don't own a copy of the manual, but from what I understand, personal pronouns, such as "I" or "we" are prohibited as part of the APA style - not sure though whether this is still current with the new edition, but you should follow what your teacher says.
that makes it considerably easier. i'm finding it incredibly hard to phrase my operational hypothesis. the experimental group makes it extremely complicated.
Group A looked at a list of 15 nonsense syllables which they had to memorise, and then recall with no cues (recall)
Group B looked at a list of 15 nonsense syllables which they had to memorise, and were given a second list containing 45 nonsense syllables which contained the original 15 syllables and they circled the syllables from the original list (recognition)
I don't know how to keep my operational hypothesis relatively short and straightforward rather than convoluted and disjointed. having to mention the second list (which is the entire point of the experiment) is a massive hindrance. any ideas?
EDIT: can you also state that it's an operational hypothesis the same way you state a hypothesis, or can you just say "this is my hypothesis" and then put in your operational hypothesis?
Ok, here is my quick and dirty guide to making a hypothesis (which I would've put into my guide thing, but I'm a bit too busy at the moment to complete). In essence, the operational hypothesis has four elements
- A population of interest
- Independent Variable
- Dependent Variable
- Direction
The other thing that is essential is that the hypothesis must be stated in the way that you can actually measure it. So for example having an hypothesis like:
It was hypothesised that students who are more intelligent are also more likely to achieve more in life compared to students who are less intelligent.
is a crap hypothesis, because you simply don't know what the author means by the word "intelligent", nor the phrase "achieve more in life". A better hypothesis might be
It was hypothesised that students who are more intelligent are also more likely to be in a higher socio-economic status compared to students who are less intelligent, as measured by an IQ test.
In Psychology, during as above is what is known has using an operational hypothesis. In anything Psychology, all hypothesises must be operational hypothesis.
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