Langston, Research Methods, Sample Debriefing Form

Use this sample debriefing form as a model for your own experiments.  Note:

1.  You should also provide a verbal description of the experiment and give participants a chance to ask questions.  This form serves as backup so they can contact you if they think of questions later.
2.  You will have to rewrite this entire document for your experiment.  This is just a sample of the level of detail you should go into.  Generally, you want to include:
a.  A hypothesis or purpose for the research.
b.  A description of why you're interested in the research.
c.  What you expect.
d.  How the participant fit into the scheme.
The goal is for participating in research to be an educational experience.  Debriefing is your chance to ensure that it is.

Debriefing Form
In this experiment we were investigating ways to improve people's comprehension of complicated texts.  Previous research has shown that pictures help.  We were interested in finding out if your prior knowledge about the way the world works would also help.  All of the text arrangements had this basic shape:

                First
              /          \
       Second   Third
            |
       Fourth

To answer the questions based on the text, it was necessary to know this shape.  To help get the shape, some of the people were instructed to think of MORE as UP (an idea people may already be familiar with).  We were hoping that this mapping onto a spatial dimension would improve their ability to understand the texts.  Others saw a picture of the arrangement, and others received no help at all.  If you would like to know the results or have further questions, feel free to contact Dr. Langston at 5489.  Thanks for your participation.

Research Methods Sample Debriefing Form
Will Langston

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