A common goal of undergraduate physics laboratory classes is for students to gain experience in the ways of thinking like an experimental physicist when designing experiments, taking measurements, performing analysis, and communicating results. Whether or not students actually develop more expert-like ways of thinking by the end of their degree remains an outstanding question. In this work, we describe a longitudinal study to answer that question using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about

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... ce Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). As a preliminary exercise, we make explicit our expectations for the results of the longitudinal study, so that in the future we may critically analyse the results while being conscious of our own biases.