Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 4 authors.
Pre-registered on 02/27/2019 04:37 PM (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? It's complicated. We have already collected some data but explain in Question 8 why readers may consider this a valid pre-registration nevertheless.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? The overarching goal of this project is to examine whether experiencing a virtual reality residential school (“VR RS”) can improve non-Indigenous Peoples’ attitudes about Indigenous Peoples in Canada. We will also test whether these effects endure over time, and explore the relative effects of simply reading the virtual school content and of priming children’s rights before experiencing the virtual reality residential school.
Confirmatory hypotheses: Our main hypothesis is that, relative to those in the control condition, participants in the VR RS (the “VR” condition) will report more positive attitudes about Indigenous Peoples in Canada (H1).
Similarly, we expect that, relative to those in the control condition, participants who experience the VR RS after first contemplating the rights of children (the “VR +” condition) will report more positive attitudes Canada (H2).
We expect that participants in the VR+ condition will report even more positive attitudes than those in the VR condition (H3), perhaps because the priming of children’s rights makes the harm/injustice clearer or more salient.
We have also designed a transcript condition wherein participants read transcripts of the information verbally presented in the VR RS. We expect that participants in both the VR and VR+ conditions will report more positive attitudes than will participants in the transcript condition (H4 and H5). We also expect that participants in the transcript condition will report more positive attitudes than those in the control condition (H6).
The above hypotheses all pertain to measurements at the second time point (T2), which is when participants are randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. Our experiment also contains a second independent variable, which is time. We will assess participants’ responses to all dependent measures at three different time points: Pre-intervention (T1), Intervention (T2), and Post-Intervention (T3). We do not expect any group differences at T1 (pre-intervention).
We would hope that the above-listed hypothesized condition differences would endure at T3(H7a), but recognize that it is also possible that the differences might taper off (H7b) or return to baseline (H7c).
Exploratory hypotheses: Because the goal of the broader project (i.e., beyond our experiment) is to use the VR RS in public spaces, such as museum installations, it is important to test the impacts of the VR RS on feelings of distress. We do not have specific hypotheses about differences in reported distress by experimental condition within or across time points.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Measures a-e will be adapted to refer to Indigenous Peoples in Canada; Measure f will be adapted to refer to discomfort experienced during the study.
a. Empathy (Batson et al., 1997)
b. Privity (Starzyk & Ross, 2008)
c. Political solidarity (Neufeld, Starzyk, & Gaucher, Under Review)
d. Behavioral Intentions (Starzyk et al., In Preparation)
e. Outgroup Warmth (Haddock, Zanna, & Esses, 1993)
f. Discomfort (Monteith, Devine, & Zuwerink, 1993)
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? Time: Participants will complete the dependent measures at three different time points.
Exposure to the VR RS: Participants will be randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: Control; Transcript; VR; VR +.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We plan to use latent growth curve modelling to examine the changes in attitudes over time/across conditions.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. We will exclude participants who are (1) Indigenous and/or (2) have lived in Canada for less than 5 years.
We will inspect the data for extreme outliers (univariate: 3 SD above or below the mean; multivariate: Mahalanobis distance test) and examine each. If it seems that the outlier is evidence of unconscientious responding (e.g., the same value was selected for all items across all measures), we may remove that data point or exclude the participant from all analyses, whichever is deemed more appropriate by a majority of the research team.
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. We will stop recruiting participants when we reach 100 participants per cell (N = 400), or April 9th, 2019, whichever occurs first.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) We have begun, but not completed, data collection for this study. We have not analyzed any of the data.
We may also use covariates such as gender, length of time between time points, political orientation, etc.
