Psychology
300
Directed
Research in Psychology
Fall 2011
Professor: Joan
Ostrove
Olin-Rice
325
696-6775
http://www.macalester.edu/~ostrove/
Office hours: Wednesdays, 1 - 3 p.m.,
and by appointment
Course overview
The
purpose of this course is to provide you with a chance to conduct psychological
research. You will plan, design,
carry out, and write up your very own empirical research project! This is a great opportunity that will
introduce you to aspects of the field that you might previously have heard or
read about, and with which you will now have first-hand experience. This is a very labor-intensive course,
so expect to spend a lot of time on it, especially doing things that you often
don’t think of as part of your school work (recruiting participants for your
study, running an experiment, analyzing data). That is, of course, in addition to writing… You’ll write and re-write a lot in this
class, and should be proficient in APA-style (the editorial style of pretty
much any psychology journal article you’ve ever read) by the end of the
semester. This class is both hard
and fun! Hopefully, the course
will be set up so that you get plenty of help with the hard parts, and lots of
company and lots of payoff for the fun parts. By the end of the course, you will (hopefully!) have
developed:
·
an understanding of the decisions and
responsibilities associated with research in psychology
·
proficiency in collecting and analyzing data
·
proficiency in communicating (orally and in written
form) in the language of psychology
Websites: The psychology department’s website
includes all of the forms you must fill out in order to have your project
approved (Review Form for Proposed Research):
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/research/forms/
Publication
manual: The real, official reference for all
things related to APA style is the publication manual of the American
Psychological Association (6th Edition). You should already have this because it was a required text
in Psych 201. There are a couple
of copies of the publication manual (as it is known) in Lee’s office. The library has at least one. If you’re
planning to continue study in psychology, it’s a good resource to have and
could be worth purchasing yourself (check, among other places, APA’s website [www.apa.org])
This
class is officially scheduled to meet from 10:50-11:50 on Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays. Much of that time we
will not meet as an entire
group. Instead, you will have
short individual meetings with me every week (either during regular class time
on M or F, or at other times; I will pass around a sign-up sheet for individual
meetings on our first day together in our section) so that we can facilitate
the progress of your particular project. We will meet together as a group every Wednesday,
during which time I’ll provide information about different aspects of the
research process and we’ll have a chance to discuss those issues as a group
(especially as they pertain to your own work). In addition, much of what makes research both more fun and
more manageable is the knowledge and support and information we get from others
who are engaged in a similar process.
Please plan to keep ALL of the regularly scheduled course times open
because we will need to have additional full class meetings at some times
during the semester.
Psychology
research is (usually) conducted and (virtually always) written up in a quite
structured fashion. There are four
parts to the manuscript, so your assignments will be set up accordingly, with a
few added steps to facilitate the process.
Individual library
session
(required; 5 points deducted from your final grade if you do not attend)
As
you are developing your research topics and working on reviewing the research
literature, you will have an individual meeting with either Beth Hillemann or Leslie Mollnar in
the library. They will provide you
with information and strategies about navigating PsycINFO
and other critical databases and resources that will be tailored to your
particular needs. This is an
invaluable opportunity and the library staff has been incredibly generous in
making themselves available to you.
You must complete your library
session by Wed, Sept 21st.
I. Introduction outline
Your first assignment will be to write up a
paragraph that describes your proposed area of research. This will be followed by an outline of
your plan for your project. What
is your research area of interest?
What is a key unanswered question or issue in that area that you will
address? What are the relevant
areas of literature that you will read and critically review in order to design
your own project? For each heading
and subheading of your outline, you must cite at least one relevant reference
from the psychology research literature that you’ve already read.
II. Introduction/Literature
Review
The
introduction to a psychology research paper states the broad issues to be
addressed, summarizes the previous research done on this topic, indicates the
“gaps” that the current project aims to fill, and states the hypothes(i/e)s of the current project. The publication manual provides guidelines for writing this
section, you can base your introduction on others that you’ve read, and we’ll
talk more in class about how to write the literature review. You’ll do yours in two steps:
1) Draft – A first
draft of your literature review.
2) Revised literature review
– A revised version of your literature review based on my feedback and
whatever other literature you’ve read in the meantime. It should be well-organized,
well-argued, and clearly and concisely written. The revision will be due with the revision of your Method
section (see below)
III.
Method
The
method describes all aspects of the procedure that you follow to conduct your
study (who are the people, what will they do as part of participating in the
study [including how you will debrief them at the end, if necessary], what
variables are you interested in and how are you measuring them, how are you
going to analyze the data). The
general idea is that someone reading your Method section should be able to
replicate your study themselves; that means there is
an extensive amount of extremely informative and important information in this
section! Again, this is described
in the publication manual, you’ll have read a bunch of different method
sections, and we’ll discuss how to write a method section in class. As you prepare to write your method
section, you’ll also be working on your PRB proposal, otherwise knows as the
Research Proposal Application see link at
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/research/forms/). This will be described more extensively
in class, but you should be prepared during this time to be gathering materials
for completing this form. There
are two parts to the method assignment:
1) Draft – A first
draft of your method section.
2) Revised method section
– A revised version of your method section (to be turned in with your
revised Introduction).
IV. PRB Proposal
The Institutional Review Board is the name
typically given to the committee that decides whether or not a proposed
research study is appropriate and meets ethical standards for research. In the department here, we have named
this the Psychology Review Board (PRB) Our section will serve as a “review
board” for proposals from the other sections of Directed Research, and people
in the other sections will review your proposals. This is a critically important step in the research process
and I expect you to take it very seriously.
V.
Results
The results section is where you describe the
results of the statistical analyses of your data. Not to worry, I’ll be very available for personal
statistical consultation, and we’ll spend time in class reviewing the basics of
what you’ll need to do both conceptually and in terms of using the computer. Plus, you should be really well prepared
for this after RIP I and II, right?!
There are lots of specific APA guidelines for summarizing results
in both the text and in tables and graphs, so you’ll need that publication
manual handy…
VI. Discussion
The discussion section is lots more than a
restatement of what you found in “regular” language. It also addresses why you think you found what you did, how
your findings fit in to the broader literature, what the limitations of your
study were, and what the larger implications of the study could be.
VII.
Manuscript
Here’s
the whole thing, all put together.
The sections should flow easily, one to the next, and the entire paper
should be a coherent presentation of a study that someone else could implement
just by reading about what you did.
The complete manuscript also includes a title page, an abstract,
reference pages, notes (if necessary), tables (if you’ve got them). Again, here’s where the publication
manual is really helpful.
VII.
Poster
As
you complete the draft of your manuscript, you’ll create a poster presentation
about your work. The ability to
communicate your ideas and the results of your work succinctly and clearly is a
critical part of the research process.
There are samples of other students’ posters hanging in the halls around
the Psych Department, and we’ll talk a lot toward the end of class about how to
create an effective poster.
Summary of
evaluation/course grade calculation
|
o Introduction outline 5% o Introduction draft 10% o Method draft 10% o PRB proposal 10% o Revised intro and method 10% |
o Results draft 10% o Poster draft 5% o Final poster 10% o Final manuscript 20% o Process* 5% o Implementation** 5% |
*The process grade is
based on the amount of energy, enthusiasm, and overall hard work you put into
this entire project
**The implementation
grade is based on how successfully you actually carry out the mechanics of your
project (developing whatever measures/experiment you use/design; collecting an
adequate amount of data; analyzing your data)
Friday,
Sept 9 – group meeting
Monday,
Sept 12 – group meeting
Wed,
Sept 14 – group meeting
Fri, Sept 16 – Introduction outline due
Mon, Sept 19 – individual
meetings begin this week
Wed, Sept 21 – group
meeting
Fri, Sept 23 and Mon, Sept 26
[no individual meetings] – Introduction
draft due Mon, Sept 26
Wed,
Sept 28 – group meeting
Wed, Oct
5 – group meeting
Fri, Oct
7 – Method draft due
Mon, Oct
10 – group meeting (SONA and Survey Monkey)?
Wed, Oct
12 – group meeting (SONA and Survey Monkey)?; PRB proposal due
[we will likely add group meetings this week and next (Mon
and Fri) to review PRBs]
Wed, Oct
19 – group meeting
Mon, Oct
24 – Introduction and method
sections revision due
Wed, Oct
26 – group meeting
Wed, Nov
2 – group meeting
Wed, Nov
9 – group meeting
Wed, Nov
16 – additional individual meetings for data analysis
Wed, Nov
23 [no meeting] draft of results due
Wed, Nov
30 – group meeting
Mon, Dec
5 – poster presentation draft due
Wed, Dec
7 – in class poster presentation
Mon, Dec
12 –final poster due
Friday,
Dec 16 – final manuscript due
Other course policies:
·
Academic integrity: I
expect all of you to follow the college’s guidelines
regarding academic integrity, outlined in the Student Handbook. Please talk to me if you are not clear
how these guidelines apply to the course.
I will report any suspicion of academic dishonesty to the Dean of
Academic Programs. Academic
dishonesty will result in at least a failing grade on the assignment, and a
second instance of dishonesty will usually result in a failing grade in the
course.
·
Late work: You may not
receive extensions on work in the class, except in the most extraordinary
circumstances (in which you will need documentation from the Dean of Students’
Office or Health Services). Work
that is turned in late for any other reason will have one quarter of the point
value of the assignment taken off for each day that it is late (the “day late”
begins immediately after the time the assignment is due)
·
Incompletes: I
will only grant incompletes under extraordinary circumstances that occur in the
second part of the semester. This
will not include being really busy at the end of the semester.
·
Written assignments:
Please type, double-spaced with 12-point font, all of your assignments
for this course. Please do not use
margins that are larger than 1 inch – all around. Don’t use smaller margins, or smaller
font, either – length is not necessarily strength.
·
Accommodations for students with disabilities: I will provide any reasonable
accommodation for students with disabilities that will assist in making this
course accessible and will provide an optimal educational experience for
everyone. Please speak to me at the beginning of the semester so that we can
make an effective plan. See http://www.macalester.edu/studentaffairs/disabilityservices/
for additional information and assistance.
·
Religious observance: If you will miss class
or an individual meeting because of a religious observance, please let me know
in advance to make alternate arrangements.
·
Cell phones:
Please turn your cell phones and other mobile devices off or to a
(completely) silent (vibrate is not silent!) mode while in class or individual
meetings. Except under
extraordinary circumstances, you may not make or accept phone calls or text
messages during class. If you know
you are expecting a call or text in an emergency situation, please try to let
me know in advance of class that this may happen. If you must take a call, do so quietly outside of the
classroom.