PSY 335 Week 5 Qualitative Methods and a Research Proposal Example

Why Students Keep Scrolling: A Mixed-Methods Research Proposal on Phones, Bedtime and Sleep

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/335: Research Methods

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The student researcher and the proposed study are composites written for a model paper; methods guidance and research findings come from the sources listed.

Earlier weeks built the pieces of a study on bedtime phone use: a hypothesis, an ethics review, an experimental design and a survey. The survey found that phone use, bedtime procrastination and poor sleep travel together, but it could not explain why students keep scrolling when many believe it harms their sleep. Qualitative methods are suited to that question. This paper describes them and presents a complete mixed-methods proposal.

Why Add Qualitative Methods

Quantitative methods count and compare: how long students take to fall asleep, how strongly two variables correlate. Qualitative methods explore meaning and process: how students describe their evening routines, what the phone does for them at night and what makes putting it away hard. The two approaches answer different questions, and in a mixed-methods study each can explain or extend the other.

Choosing Interviews

Several qualitative methods could fit. Focus groups might generate lively discussion but could push students toward the group's views on a habit many feel embarrassed about. Observation is impossible in bedrooms. Semi-structured interviews, guided by a list of open questions but flexible enough to follow up on what participants raise, allow each student to describe private routines in detail.

The interview guide begins broadly, "Walk me through the last hour before you went to sleep last night," and moves to more specific prompts: what the phone is used for, how it feels to stop and what happened during the phone-free week of the experiment.

How Many Interviews

Guest et al. (2006) coded sixty interviews with women in two West African countries and tracked when new codes stopped appearing. Most of the codes that would eventually be identified emerged within the first twelve interviews, and basic themes appeared within the first six. They cautioned that this applies to fairly similar participants and focused questions. Marisol's participants are similar college students and her question is focused, so fifteen interviews, drawn from the experiment's participants with variety in class year and in how much the phone-free week changed their sleep, should be enough.

Analyzing the Interviews

Braun and Clarke (2006) presented thematic analysis as an adaptable way to identify and interpret recurring ideas across a qualitative data set, moving through six stages that run from immersion in the transcripts and first-pass coding to building, checking and naming themes and finally writing them up. They argued that researchers should state their theoretical assumptions and decisions openly rather than claiming that themes simply emerge.

Applied here, Marisol will transcribe each interview, read transcripts several times, code meaningful segments such as "winding down," "fear of missing messages" or "nothing else to do," group codes into candidate themes, check those themes against the full data set and write clear definitions with supporting quotations.

Trustworthiness

Qualitative research is judged by credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability rather than by statistical reliability. Marisol will keep a reflexive journal noting her own heavy phone use and expectations, since she shares the habit she is studying. A second coder will independently code three transcripts and the two will discuss differences. Participants will receive a summary of themes and be invited to comment, a step called member checking. A detailed record of coding decisions will form an audit trail.

The experiment can show whether a phone-free hour helps; only the interviews can show why students find that hour so hard to keep.

The Full Proposal

Introduction and literature. Laboratory work on evening screen light, a randomized trial of bedtime phone restriction and research on bedtime procrastination establish the problem and the gap: little is known about why students persist with the habit.

Research questions and hypothesis. Hypothesis: students will fall asleep faster during a phone-free week than during a usual-routine week. Qualitative question: how do college students describe the role of their phones at bedtime, and what helps or hinders putting them away?

Participants. Thirty undergraduates aged eighteen or older recruited through the department research pool, with fifteen invited to interviews.

Procedure. A crossover design with two one-week periods in counterbalanced order, separated by a washout gap and scheduled away from exams, followed by interviews within a week of completion.

Measures. Sleep onset latency and total sleep time from wrist-worn trackers, a morning reaction-time test, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, the bedtime procrastination scale and logged screen time.

Analysis. A paired t test on sleep onset latency, with effect size and confidence interval; thematic analysis of interviews; and a joint display comparing themes for students whose sleep improved with those whose sleep did not.

Ethics. Institutional review board approval, written informed consent, an equivalent alternative to research credit, coded data stored securely and full debriefing.

Reporting Standards

Levitt et al. (2018), writing for an APA task force, set out reporting standards for qualitative and mixed methods research, asking authors to describe their methodological approach, their own perspectives, participant selection, data collection and the steps taken to ensure their findings are well grounded, and in mixed methods work to explain how the strands were combined. Marisol's write-up will follow these standards, reporting the joint display and how each strand informed the other.

Timeline and Resources

Review board approval is expected in the first month of the semester, recruitment and the two experimental weeks in the second and third months and interviews, transcription and coding in the fourth. The department lends thirty activity trackers, so the main costs are small gift cards for interview participants and transcription software, both covered by a student research grant. Keeping the plan this modest is what makes it possible for one undergraduate to finish within a single semester.

Limitations

Volunteers may be more motivated to change than typical students, the study covers only two weeks and the interviews reflect students at one university. The qualitative findings are meant to deepen understanding, not to estimate how common each view is.

Conclusion

Pairing a crossover experiment with semi-structured interviews lets one study test whether a phone-free hour improves sleep and explore why the habit persists. A justified interview sample, a stepwise thematic analysis, explicit trustworthiness strategies and recognized reporting standards complete a proposal that carries forward the ethics, design and measurement work of the course.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods, 18(1), 59-82. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X05279903

Levitt, H. M., Bamberg, M., Creswell, J. W., Frost, D. M., Josselson, R., & Suárez-Orozco, C. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 26-46. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000151