Catalog Description: A course designed to introduce students to experimental methods applied to the behavioral sciences. Basic statistics, analysis and experimental design will be presented. Laboratory time will be spent designing, implementing, and analyzing research projects.
Goals: The main goal of this course is for you to achieve a full understanding of how psychological research is properly conducted. After this course, you should be capable of designing your own experiments, evaluating results, writing reports, and critiquing others' research.
Attendance Policy: There is no attendance policy in this class. However, you are expected to be here for class (see p. 67 of the NGCSU Undergraduate Bulletin). Attendance will not be counted or evaluated, but please remember, it is YOUR responsibility -- not mine -- to catch up on what you missed (translation: if you ask nicely, I will help you catch up). Also recognize that we have group projects in class periodically and you will receive a zero if you miss class that day.
Late Assignments and Missed Classwork: Assignments are due at the start of each class. Assignments turned in between 5 minutes and 24 hours after they are due are counted as 1/2 late. Half late assignments will be deducted 20%. Between 24 and 48 hours late will be deducted 40%. After 48 hours, the assignment will receive a zero. Classwork missed due to illness will be accepted only when accompanied by a written medical excuse.
Week 1-3:
Introduction to data bases in social sciences; begin searching your
topic
Discuss basic design issues (e.g., correlational vs. experimental
approaches);
Discuss replication, validity issues
Week 4-6:
Discuss advanced issues (e.g., confounds);
Week 7:
Ethical issues
Week 8-9
General issues in scholarship; Prepare and submit individual project
literature
review
Week 10:
Prepare and submit individual project proposal; Conduct group survey
experiment
Week 11-12: Practice
critiquing
research
Week 13-15: Collect data for
individual project
Week 15:
Complete final paper, report findings to classmates.
(Or, alternatively, take a comprehensive final exam)
Jan. 29th
Individual Project Bibliography due (10% of final grade)
February 24th
Individual Project Literature review due (10% of final grade)
March 5th
Last Day to Drop with a W
March 23rd
Individual Project Research Proposal due* (20% of final grade)
April
6th
Group (survey) project report due
April 13th
HONORS DAY
April 22nd
Individual Project Research Reports due (25% of final grade)
April 27th
Practice Session for Oral Presentations; slide shows due
April 28th, May 1st
Oral Presentations (5% of final grade)
May 1st, 1:00pm Final Exam (30% of final
grade
for those who choose this option)
*Note: You must turn in a human subjects application before collecting any data.
Final Exam: If you choose to take a comprehensive final in lieu of actually running your study and writing up and orally delivering a report, the exam will be all-essay.
Other Exams: There are no other exams in this class. Unless you insist on taking the comprehensive final, you will take no exams in this class.
Individual Project: I strongly advise that you download my suggested timeline for completing the project and try to stick to this schedule. The first step is to identify a topic you are interested in and learn more about it, by locating scientific evidence (not Newsweek articles). You will need to learn to search the relevant databases (try PsycINFO) and prepare a list of articles you plan to look at, which you will submit to me as your initial Project Bibliography.
The second step is to obtain and read the articles you have identified in your literature review, summarize the key findings relevant to your idea in the Literature Review, and develop your own hypothesis based on this review. You are likely to find during this second step that your hypothesis has changed somewhat from what you had originally anticipated (you may even decide to do something completely different).
The third step is to carefully plan the method you will use to test your hypothesis, culminating in your Research Proposal (which can be turned in at any time up until the due date). The next step is to actually conduct your study and write a Final Report. I can help you obtain subjects if undergrads can be used, otherwise you'll need to find your own participants.
The last two class days will be devoted to oral reports of the research conducted by those who completed individual projects. Even if you choose not to complete the individual project, EVERYONE will turn in a quality research proposal. If you procrastinate and try to put this together in short bursts the night before due dates, you will be turning in crap that I don't want to read and you aren't very proud of. Start putting things together early! Come and talk to me during the early part of the semester...and continue to consult with me. I truly want you to have a good project, and will help you whenever it is appropriate.
If you send me e-mail to ask specific questions, or to request suggestions, I will respond as quickly as possible. For more involved assistance, please schedule a meeting with me outside of class time. Whether you work together with me or fly solo, I want badly for you to produce a paper of which you are proud, and most of you will. I cannot overemphasize the importance of getting an early start on this, but I know some of you will still procrastinate. All I can say is, the price you pay will likely be an embarrassingly low grade.
NOTE: The proposed individual project must utilize at least two independent variables, and I prefer that you design a systematic replication rather than an exact replication (don't worry, these terms will be explained to you later).
A quality report is expected, and I refuse to define "quality" in terms of a specific number of pages. If you can completely summarize a body of literature and report an experimental design in 5 pages, then 5 pages is enough (atlhough I should point out that this is unlikely) . Do be concerned with questions like "have I done a thorough job in describing past research and leading the reader into my hypothesis?" and "are my procedures articulated clearly enough such that someone else could easily replicate my experiment?" DO NOT be concerned with questions like "if I make the margins a little wider, will that make this reach 10 pages?" or "is there a long quote somewhere that I could use to take up a half page or more?"
What
To Expect
The bulk of your knowledge acquisition in this class will be through
"hands on" experience. I will give occasional lectures and have some
readings
on reserve at the NGCSU library. You can expect that this knowledge
will
not come easily, and you can also expect that we will go over the same
concepts several times to try and help you grasp them.
You can also expect to work very hard outside of class. If the idea of designing your own independent research project sounds like fun, then you'll do well in this class and are a good candidate for graduate study. If you treat this as an opportunity to learn about the existing research (plus adding your own set of findiings) on a topic you find intrinsically interesting, it will seem painless. Unfortunately, many students treat the individual research project requirement as one of the major hassles of their undergraduate career, look for ways to cut corners, and end up with a subpar project.
What to expect from me: Part of my strategy in teaching this class is to intentionally avoid spoon-feeding. It may be frustrating to many of you (and it's often more difficult for me than simply telling you an answer), but I will frequently respond to your questions with questions rather than answers. I want you to discover the answer, and I think you'll find that you are able to do so. This way, you'll understand the thought process involved in arriving at the answer, and I think that's more important than knowing the answer to any single question.
I will do my absolute best to help you come up with a researchable idea, and to help you locate materials for your proposal. You must take the first step, however: I am not going to come looking for you to see if you need any assistance. Please remember, doing good research is not about memorizing a formula or a recipe, it's about understanding a variety of abstract concepts and how they relate to each other. My goal is for you to leave this class with the capacity to understand and evaluate research and to conduct your own (with minimal assistance). As an old folk saying goes: "give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish, feed him for a lifetime." Some topics don't really lend themselves to anything beyond lecturing, but research methods is a course which begs for applied experience. I firmly believe that we learn best by doing, not by reading or listening to someone else, and so there will be plenty of doing in this class. I personally take great pleasure from conducting research, and I hope you find it to be enjoyable as well. There is plenty of work involved, and it is inevitable that frustrations will crop up from time to time, but all the obstacles are surmountable. Just hang in there! The end result is generally viewed by students as worth the effort.
Doing Literature Searches: Some of the information that's important to remember includes the following. First, this is not Yale, it's not even Emory. You are a student (by choice, I presume) at a small college with a small library budget; part of the price of being in such a situation is that the library doesn't have everything. It never will. I prefer to focus on what we do have: a solid database (via Galileo) and a quite decent interlibrary loan (ILL) service. Many schools' ILL requests take at least a month to process. North Georgia's ILL often has the article to you within two weeks. If that's longer than you can wait, Athens (UGa) and Atlanta (GSU) are each 75 minutes away. Although the library staff will certainly help you use PsycINFO, they cannot be expected to know the exact search terms to use for every topic under the sun. They have their training in Library Sciences, not psychology. If you don't know what terms to use to search psychological concepts, ask a psychologist (like me) for help. Successful lit searches require more than just the right software; they require an intelligent person to guide the software. Finally, don't expect to finish the lit search in one sitting. It usually takes several separate searches to pin down the most relevant work. Please, don't come to me after an hour on PsycINFO and tell me that there isn't any work on your topic! I know better! It just takes some patience to find it (or some help from someone with a little more experience doing these things).
I often assign grades using letters, not numbers, but you can
determine
your progress by making some simple conversions. If you get an A+, that
is converted to 100. Other grades are converted to numbers as follows:
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