Final project: getting started

PSYC 11: Laboratory in Psychological Science

Jeremy R. Manning
Dartmouth College
Spring 2026

Welcome to part 2 of the course!

  • This week (week 6): find a group, design your study, start implementing/building
  • Week 7: human subjects training, collect data
  • Week 8: analyze data
  • Week 9: interpreting results
  • Week 10: wrap-up (paper + poster)

How to pick a topic

  • A good project question is one you genuinely want to know the answer to
  • It should be interesting to you and your group
  • It should be testable (i.e., you can collect data to answer it)
  • It should be feasible (i.e., you can do it in 5 weeks)
  • It should be ethical (i.e., it'll pass human subjects testing review)

Forming groups

  • Ideal group size: 3 students (1--4 is OK)
  • Look for complementary skills (coding, writing, design, stats)
  • Shared curiosity about a topic matters more than shared expertise
  • Create a Slack channel for your group, invite all members + TAs + me

Rest of today: pitches and feedback!

  • No slides; just talking
  • Each pitch should be no longer than 1 minute (just a few sentences):
    • What is your question?
    • How are you thinking of studying it?
    • What are you looking for? (New group members? Feedback on the idea?)
  • After each pitch, we'll take a few minutes for questions/feedback from the class/expressions of interest in joining the project
  • We'll get through as many pitches as we can; anything we don't get to you can post on Slack

Questions? Want to chat more?

📧 Email me
💬 Join our Slack
💁 Come to office hours
  • From here on, we'll meet here at the start of class and then break out into project groups for the rest of the class time
  • Wednesday: Design your experiment. Also: Literature Review Lab writeup and Weekly Snippet 1 are due by 11:59PM!
  • Friday: Implement your experiment