Research Methods and Statistics 
Psychology 220, Winter 2003

Office Hours

T 9:00 am, W 11:00 am & 3:00 pm, F 11:00 am

Announcements

Feb 11, 2003
Here is the data for today's lab.

Feb 11, 2003
I  have posted the lists of causal and relationship words that we developed under the study resources listed below.

Jan 16, 2003
I have posted my office hours.  Above you will also find a link to my schedule.

Jan 15, 2003
I have added two new features to the syllabus: a link to a set of pages that relate to the structure of a PsychINFO record to facilitate your searching.  It is listed under the schedule for the labs.  I  have also added a link to a glossary of research terms I have built.  Find it here. 

Jan 6, 2003
Look here for announcements pertaining to the course.

Course Description

This course is designed to introduce you to basic methods of doing psychological research.  As such the course is a very valuable and practical one, even if you career is not in psychology.  In this course you will learn ways to try to answer questions when you no longer have anyone around to tell you what you are supposed to know.  Remember, your days sitting in a classroom are numbered.  These methods will help in all kinds of situations when ever you need to figure out an answer both inside and outside of psychology.  An alum I know who as a student in my early days here got a job in quality control at an oil and gas refinery.  He told me the course that was most beneficial in his job was research methods.  However, such a course can be dangerous.  It may come across that doing good research is following a set of well established procedures that will crank out the correct answer much the same way that a calculator can correctly add two numbers.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  What will be taught this term is based upon people reflecting upon what it takes to know something.  To really learn from scratch.  They have developed a philosophy of what it takes to know.  That philosophy underlies what will be taught.  That philosophy is debatable and continues to be debated.  More than the techniques, the reasons for using the techniques need to be understood.

Objectives:

Course Objectives:

Psychology is a science! You have heard that in every psychology course that you have taken so far but you have probably not yet confronted exactly what that phrase means. The fundamental objective of this course is to challenge you with the scientific approach to psychology. As a preview, using a scientific approach is a way of thinking: more particularly, it is specific ways of collecting information (called data), ways of looking at and manipulating the information (statistics for the most part), and the way in which conclusions are reached using that information. These techniques for thinking are not just essential for trying to contribute to psychological knowledge (that is, to do research) but also for understanding what a particular piece of psychological knowledge means. Hopefully, as a result of the course you will think differently about what you have read in psychology so far and also approach your other courses with a more critical eye. To best accomplish these goals we will both cover the theory behind several psychological methods and try our hand at as many as possible. The theory will be covered in class and we will use the labs to perform very small scale psychological research and see how these methods work in some real situations.

Role of Course in Major:

In many ways this is a foundation course.  This course is a prerequisite for all of the 300 level courses in the major and also the senior sequence.  In the 300 level laboratory courses and in the senior sequence you will be required to do research that you will design.  Thus, this course is a very direct foundation for these later courses.  In the non-laboratory courses you will be expected to critique research.  To critique is an important skill.  It does not me to say what is wrong but understand the reasons for a certain claim (whether psychological or not) and to evaluated the quality, good and bad, of that claim.  

Role of Course in the Liberal Arts:

This course is about learning to think and reason for your self.  To generate knowledge to search for truth.  All courses here bear on these goals, but this course is explicitly about psychology's understanding of how this can be done.  As such, few courses are more closley tied to the liberal arts than this one. 

Tentative Class Schedule

Final Comprehensive Exam

Tentative Lab Schedule

Assignments

Class Assignments:

In the class there will two types of assignments:

Exams: There will be a mid term and final.  In these exams (cumulative) you will asked to demonstrate and explain all of the skills and ideas that have been covered up to that time.  The will be open formats: essays and problems.

Homework: Regularly throughout the class you will have homework problems where you can work on the ideas and techniques that have been covered.  They will be graded on a check, check +, check- (95,85,75) system.  I will explain this in class.

Lab Assignments:

In the lab, there will be a variety of assignments:

Problems: you will sometimes have problems to help you gain experience with the statistical issues that we have covered.

Papers: You will have papers to help you on your writing skills and teach you APA format.

Final Project: in small groups you will develop, execute, and present a piece of empirical research.  This will be explained more as the course goes on.

Grading

I grade on a 10% scale (60% for a D, 70% for a C, etc).  The weight of each assignment will be determined by its number of points.  You are encouraged to ask about your grades in the course at any time.

Study Resources

• Draft Glossary of Terms

• Causal Terms

• Relationship Terms