WATER

Day 1:
Today for our psych project we added finishing touches to our student handouts 11-15. Our project is to help us understand why people have more positive opinions toward brand name products. Is it because everybody else likes them? Or simply because they are better than unbranded products? We also spent some time debating our thesis statement, making sure we are covering all bases.
Here are links to all our student handouts, which cover the basics of our experiment:
Student Handout 11
Student Handout 12
Student Handout 13
Student Handout 14
Student Handout 15

Day 2:
Today for our psych project we finished up Student Handout 13, and discussed how we want our experiment to play out. We also completed Student Handout 16 and 17. We decided to make a handout that each participant will fill out after they taste the water and they will put the slip into its corresponding box.
As of now our experiment procedure will be as follows:

Participants will sit in one of our two individual taste testing booths
They will receive two cups of water, one labeled A and one labeled B
Each cup will have tap water however we will tell participants that cup B is a brand name water (Ex: Voss, Smartwater, Fjij) The way we will trick them into thinking cup B has brand name water is by replacing the original water in the bottle with tap water before the experiment takes place. We will make sure participants see us pouring the water from the branded bottle into cup B.
After participants take drinks out of each cup we will ask them to choose an A or B slip and place it into the A or B box
After they have chosen their favorite water we will give them a slip to explain why they chose the water they did
After the experiment we will tally which water had more slips in its box and the results will give us an answer to our hypothesis: If people are given tap water from a branded bottle then, they will have a more positive opinion toward it than if it was regular tap water.

Student Handout 16

Handout for Participants

Day 3:
Today for our psych project we had to start our rough draft for our final paper on Student Handout 18. We also had to make a list of our materials on Student Handout 20, along with confirming extra details on our experiment on Student Handout 19. We discussed the title of our experiment (which is not yet decided) and our vision for our poster board and set up. We want to trick our participants into thinking we are taking a survey on why they prefer tap water or branded water; therefore our poster board cannot give away that we are actually experimenting on the effect brands have on people's opinions. We also decided to buy our materials tonight for the project so we can stay on track.
Our experiment requires the following materials:

Three fold poster board
Dixie cups (two different patterns)
Three boxes (for participants feedback slips)
Four dividers (to separate participants from each other)
Multiple bottles of Voss or Smartwater
Sharpies (for participants feedback)
Lots of copies of our feedback slip

Student Handout 18

Student Handout 19

Student Handout 20

Day 4:

Today for our psych project we had a catch up day because we were not assigned any new student handouts. We perfected and turned in our Student Handout 18. We also discussed what we want our booth to be called (still no final decision). We contemplated the design of our poster board and the aesthetic we are trying to accomplish. We want to make it very simple so our message is clear, although we are tricking participants and not showing them the true experiment. Our participants are going to be what is called "single-blind" which means they will not know the hypothesis being tested.

Day 5:
Today we took a break as a class from our projects. We watched John Oliver in class, a perfect ending to our week.

Day 6:
Today for our psych project we started to type up exactly what needs to be put on our poster board. We decided that we are going to type our information, print it out, and glue it on our board so it stays neat and simple. We also discussed a time and place to add finishing touches to our poster board.

Poster Board Information
Psychology Book (includes poster board template)

Day 7:
Today for our psych project we covered our poster board in light blue table cloth to go with our theme of water. We also decided on finishing our poster board on Friday outside of school.
On Friday we put our title, hypothesis, facts, and main research points on our poster. We also decided that our poster was a little bland, so we added waves to the bottom and raindrops throughout to help with the design.

Day 8:
Today for our project we printed and cut almost 700 of our handouts. We also went over our procedure and how we plan on approaching our participants. We decided that in order to trick them we will have to tell them we are simply taking a survey to see which water they liked more.
Day 8 Part 2:
For psych fair we were given the opportunity to test and perfect our experiments at night with parents before the actual fair happened at school the next day. Our group arrived about 30 minutes early to set up our experiment.
We brought the following items:

Poster Board
800 dixie cups
A 2.5 liter of cold tap water
3 one liter pitchers of cold tap water
2 Voss water bottles filled with the same cold tap water
Slips of paper for water types A and B
Boxes to place slips into
Survey handouts
Survey handout box to collect
Pens

After we set up, we found that putting the water and cups directly in front of us was most efficient and then sending participants to the end of the table to put their slip into its corresponding box and fill out the survey. This flow helped us with the traffic jam of participants. We also found that both types of water had to be the same temperature for accurate results and that people preferred freshly poured water. Some things we noticed about participants opinions were: People preferred cold water, Talk slowly so they understand the three steps they must go through to complete our experiment, They liked being given the tap water in the pitcher first, a lot of people convinced themselves the "Voss" water was smoother than the tap water. Overall, we were able to perfect our project and predict how much water we would need for the next day.

Amount of water brought to parent night

Set up for parent night

Day 9:

PSYCH FAIR DAY!! For today we got to school a bit early because we had to bring in more refilled pitchers to get ready for the masses of students and we decided to buy candy for anyone that completed our experiment. We brought a 2.5 liter jug of cold tap water, 4 one liter pitchers of cold tap and 3 32oz water bottles of cold tap, we also brought a container of ice to keep the water at the same temperature. Today we started off by having fellow AP Psych students take our "survey" and see what they thought. Many of the students guessed they were the same water, so for those who guessed that we gave them a different or better lollipop than those who just completed the survey. A lot of students choose the Voss water merely because it was in that bottle, we had many say "they both tasted the same, but I am going to choose the Voss because it's Voss." We also had people choose the tap water, but they seemed surprised and a little confused as to why they preferred the tap over the brand name. We also had many people intrigued by our experiment which was interesting because it simply was a water taste test. We also decided to make a google doc to record and organize our data.
Data Collection

We wanted to add some pictures of our table and final project: