Psychology 300
Directed Research in Psychology
Spring 2008
Professor: Joan
Ostrove
Olin-Rice 325
696-6464
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
both the Student Handbook, which describes many critical procedures and
policies related to Directed Research, and the forms you must fill out in order
to have your project approved (Review Form for Proposed Research)
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/student_resources/index.html
Publication
manual: The real, official reference for all things
related to APA style is the publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (5th Edition). You
should already have this because it was a required text in Psych 200. There are a couple of copies of the
publication manual (as it is known) in Mary Claire’s office. The library has at least one. I have 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])
The
research method textbook you used in RIP II will likely be a useful source for this class,
too.
This
class is officially scheduled to meet from 8:30-10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some of that time we will not actually meet
as an entire group. For example, you
will have short individual meetings with me every week (usually on Thursdays) so
that we can facilitate the progress of your particular project. We will meet together as a group every Tuesday,
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 T/Th 8:30-10 times open.
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.
I. Topic statement and conceptual outline (5% of course grade)
Your first assignment will be to write up a paragraph
that describes your proposed area of research and gives the citation for at
least one article you’ve read that informs this potential project. This will followed by an outline of your plan
for your project. What is the research
area of interest? 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.
Topic statement
DUE: Thurs, Feb 7
Conceptual
outline DUE: Tues, Feb 12
II. Introduction/Literature
Review (20%
of course grade)
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
(deduct 5 points if you do not turn this in) – A first draft of your literature
review.
2)
Revised
literature review (20 points) – 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.
III.
Method
(15% of course grade)
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). 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 Review Form for Research with Human Participants
(see link at http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/student_resources/index.html). 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
(deduct 5 points if you do not turn this in) – A first draft of your method
section.
2)
Revised
method section (15 points) – A revised version of your method section.
DUE: Tues, Mar 25
IV.
Results
(15% of course grade)
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. 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…
1)
Draft
(deduct 5 points if you do not turn this in)
2)
Revised
results section (15 points)
DUE: Thurs, April 17
V. Discussion outline (5% of course grade)
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. At this point, you’ll hand in an outline of
this section and will write up the full thing only as part of the completed
manuscript
Discussion outline (5 points)
VI.
Manuscript
(25% of course grade)
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.
Draft (Deduct 5 points if you do not turn this
in)
Due: Tues, April 29
Final manuscript (25 points) – By this time you’ll have
gotten feedback from me, as well as from having presented your work both at
MUPC and in class. Incorporate all of
this feedback as well as whatever other revisions you want to make into your
final paper.
DUE: Fri, May 9
VII.
Presentation
(5% of course grade)
As
you complete the draft of your manuscript, you’ll present your work to the
class. The ability to communicate your ideas
and the results of your work succinctly and clearly is a critical part of the
research process. The presentation
should include a summary of the literature that informs your work, your
hypotheses and research questions, your methodology, and your
major findings and a discussion of your results. You may choose to prepare a 10-minute powerpoint presentation of your
work, or a poster presentation through which you will describe your project to
the class. You will have 10 minutes for
your presentation, with 5 minutes for feedback.
PRESENTATION DATES: Tues, April 29 and Thurs, May 1
Summary of evaluation/course grade calculation
|
o
Topic statement/conceptual
outline 5% o
Literature review 20% o
Method section 15% o
Results section 15% o
Discussion outline 5% |
o
Final manuscript 25% o
Presentation 5% 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)
Thurs, Jan 31 –
choosing a topic, setting up class logistics, etc.; meet at library (2nd floor,
Bibliographic Instruction Room) for tutorial on PSYCinfo
and other ways to do bibliographic searching (mandatory)
Tues, Feb 5 –
gathering and reading the research literature; psychology and the scientific
method
Thurs, Feb 7–
individual meetings [today and every Thursday for the rest of the semester]; topic
statement due
Tues, Feb 12 –
writing an introduction/literature review; conceptual outline due
Tues, Feb 19– designing your research study; operationalizing concepts; specifying variables: ethics
Tues, Feb 26 – writing a method section
Thurs, Feb 28 – draft of literature review due
Tues, Mar 6 – Human
Participants protocol // Ethics review board starts about now… draft of
method due
Tues, Mar 11 –
ethics review, continued; collecting data
Thurs, Mar 13
– literature review revision due
Tues, Mar 25 –
review of common statistical techniques; method revision due
Tues, April 2 –
SPSS tutorial in psych computer lab
Tues, April 8 –
writing up results / presenting statistical findings
Thurs, April
10 – draft of results due
Tues, April 15
– developing a poster / presentation techniques
Thurs, April
17 – results revision due
Tues, April 22
– discussion outline due
Saturday,
April 26 – MUPC at Hamline
Tues, April 29
– in class presentations;
draft of manuscript due
Thurs, May 1 –
in class presentations, continued
Tues, May 6 –
final individual meetings (as needed)
Friday, May 9
– 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. I
will expect to receive documentation from the Assistant Dean of Students about
the kinds of accommodations that you require.
Please speak to me at the beginning of the semester so that we can make
an effective plan.