Instructions for assignment
Conceive a novel intervention proposal aimed at improving one or more issues related with adjustment and/or wellbeing. The proposal must include detailed information about how the effect or impact of the intervention will be measured.
Focus on psychological aspects of adjustment or wellbeing (e.g. self-esteem, depression, substance use, social support, community engagement), or on using psychological methods/theories to improve adjustment/wellbeing in any relevant area (e.g. physical activity, chronic conditions, disability, family functioning).
This section goes into to detail of the subheadings and how much to write in each section:
Title of the project (10-15 words)
• The title should be descriptive and clear about what the project is about
Lay summary of the project/proposed intervention (250 words)
• Not quite the same as an abstract; this should describe in a paragraph or two all the key elements of the proposed intervention and its rationale, using an accessible language that a layperson would be able to understand.
– An intervention proposal is not a research paper, therefore the summary’s structure needs to be different and focus on key aspects of the project (e.g. key aims, target population and expected outcomes), but not necessarily, as suggested, cover all of the different sections of the project.
Issue that it aims to address and rationale (200 words)
• Briefly describe the problem or issue that the intervention intends to address; provide some background information, such as descriptive statistics or previous evidence that specifically relate to the need for the issue to be addressed.
This section should not be phrased as an aim, but merely as a description of what problem/difficulty/etc is identified in the given population. This will provide support to why the intervention is needed; therefore it should provide some evidence about the existence and relevance of the issue.
Target population (100 words)
• Define the group of people that the project aims to target. This can be as large as the population of a country or of several countries, or as specific as a small group of people (e.g. BAME children aged 0-5 living in a specific estate in London; the CEOs of top 100 corporations); describe any exclusion criteria. The intervention should always be focused on a group.
Duration of the project (start and ending dates)
• Include information about how long the project will take, from implementation to conclusion, as start and finish dates only . When determining its duration, consider any initial time needed for scoping or public consultation at the beginning and any other time needed for public engagement activities, writing up the project, dissemination or follow ups.
All of these different steps and activities of the project will need to be detailed in the appendix; so it is recommended that the time plan is developed first and then is used as a basis for the information provided here. Five years is the maximum project length allowed for purposes of this assignment.
Aims of the project (100 words)
• Describe what is it that the project aims to achieve as a short bullet point list (ideally between three and six bullet points).
Background/Literature review (700 words)
• Provide a comprehensive and relevant review of the literature that supports your project. Make sure to characterise the issues that are addressed but also provide as much evidence as possible to support the type of intervention that the project intends to use, in order to justify its choice and why you believe that it will be effective in addressing the issue at stake in the target population. Justify the topic in light of the larger adjustment and wellbeing literature.
Intervention (300 words)
• Describe in some detail what the intervention will entail and how it will be implemented . The intervention can be described in as much detail as is possible roughly within the indicative word count for the section. It should provide a good sense of what will happen, e.g. type of information provided or outline of sessions, so that someone else would be able to replicate the intervention if they wanted to.
Expected outcomes (100 words)
• Describe what do you expect to achieve with the project in measurable indicators. Be realistic in your expected outcomes; these should convince the funder that your project is worthwhile their money, but you also want to make sure not to overstate what you may be able to deliver. Organise this as a bullet point list.
Assessment of the intervention (500 words)
• Explain how you will assess the impact or effects of the intervention, i.e., detail your study design (e.g. how you will collect and analyse data that will prove that the intervention delivered the expected outcomes or that there was no effect). It should include at least one research technique of the various available within Psychology, but there can also be a combination of more than one. These should be appropriate to the target population and type of intervention.
Consider also what would be the best quality evidence to support the efficacy of the project when making the decision about which approach to use (e.g. a RCT may provide strong evidence but not be feasible in some circumstances). Include the timescales for the assessment, e.g. at what moment/s of the project data will be collected for this purpose. Specify which measures or instruments will be used to assess impact. Make sure that the timeline described here matches that included in the appendix.
Expected challenges and how these will be addressed (200 words)
List possible challenges to your project and how you are thinking proactively to address them. Typical areas where challenges may arise are recruitment and engagement, but think beyond these. Propose realistic ways to address these.
The section should discuss challenges to the project as a whole. This means that it may include challenges to the research aspect (i.e. assessment of impact), but also to any practical aspects of the implementation and management of the project.
In real world settings, this is meant to help prepare for the project and plan for any contingencies, and therefore is an important aspect of project design.
The limitation section should discuss any challenges to the project as a whole. This means that it may include challenges to the research aspect of it (ie assessment of impact), but also to any practical aspects of the implementation and management of the project.
In real world settings, this is meant to help prepare for the project and plan for any contingencies, and therefore is an important aspect of project design. As for other sections of the CW, the word count will give you an indication of how much attention you should dedicate to it.
Ethical considerations (250 words)
• Discuss any ethical issues that may be relevant to the project (e.g. issues around consent or engaging vulnerable populations) and how you intend to address these.
Public engagement (300 words)
• Include information about how you will ensure that your project will incorporate the voice of those it intends to support at two levels: before and during the development of the project; and after the project is concluded, e.g. via any dissemination activities (to ensure that relevant members of the population or the whole population are aware of the findings of the project). Important note – this section should not be about recruitment.
Appendix: Project time plan (2 pages maximum)
• Design a time plan for the project that includes the predicted beginning and ending for all activities and of the whole project from launch to conclusion, including any follow up activities. This can be done with a fictional start date for the project (e.g. July 2022) or accounted to in generic months.
The appendix should be presented schematically, so as succinctly as possible list in chronological order all the key tasks for the project. Students can decide how to best do this, as per the guidance provided. It is part of the coursework therefore it is also considered during the marking process.
The appendix is only for the time-plan; there is no need to include any questionnaires or other materials. Any existing measures that you propose would be used for assessing the impact of the intervention should be described briefly and referenced under ‘assessment of intervention’, where you can also provide examples of items if you think this to be relevant. For new measures that are to be developed especially for the project students are advised to include a bit more of detail about them.
List of referneces in APA style format and in alphabetical order
Summary of criteria by which the coursework will be assessed:
Conceptual soundness:
develop a coherent argument in respect of how relevant are the theories or models used to support the intervention proposed. The conceptual framework should be firmly based on psychological principles, and expected to demonstrate clear understanding of these throughout the assignment, but particularly in the literature review and intervention sections.
Links to the Wellbeing and Adjustment literature: Assignments should make explicit the relevance of the intervention to the wellbeing or adjustment (or to both) of the target population and establish links to the literature on adjustment and wellbeing
Originality:
There are two elements to this. The first one is that it should not propose an intervention that substantially overlaps with any issue that was covered extensively in the lectures. The other is that the intervention should effectively be novel.
Consistency and coherence: The various aspects of the assignment need to be firmly and clearly aligned as a whole and coherent proposal, running across the entire assignment, starting from the title through to the appendix.
This is about conceptual consistency as described above but also about ensuring that the practical elements of the proposal make sense in the larger picture of the project, e.g. the time allocated to the intervention as described in the appendix should match the description of the intervention earlier in the assignment; the public engagement, at the onset and outset of the project should be appropriate for the target groups and aims of the intervention.
Clarity: The whole proposal should be written in a clear language that non-academics and non-specialists should be able to understand, e.g. by providing brief definitions of concepts that are not part of common knowledge and clear descriptions of the theoretical model used.
For the lay summary the expectation is that the language is even simpler as to be intelligible to an average and ‘naïve’ layperson on the street.
