Overview of the Course Psych 241 Methods of Inquiry in Psychology

The Syllabus Name: Dr. Kohler, Professor Kohler, Libbie, but NOT Ma’am! Contact Information and Office Time Course website/Moodle and Texts Exams, Grades (199 lecture/301 lab=500), SONA Disclaimers: Talk too fast, “wobbly” (Rorschach) spelling, Microphone

Lecture Overview: Section 1 How do we ask questions? How do our choices along the way change and affect our answers? The basics of “true experimental design”. How to assess research for “fatal flaws”

Lecture Overview: Section 2 The Three Steps of the “Data Analysis Plan” Traditional Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) Applied and Theoretical Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

Lecture Overview: section 3 Non-experimental (Correlational) Designs Survey/Questionnaire Observational Single-case/small-n Quasi-experimental Ethics in Research

Overview of Labs Project 1: The Stroop Effect, deriving hypotheses and writing APA-style papers. Project 2: Survey/Questionnaire designs, 1- way ANOVA. Performing a literature review. Project 3: Jury Simulation, Working independently, ethics/proposals, factorial design,s and 2-way ANOVA.

Course Goal: To help students become effective consumers of research and/or researchers themselves.

Evaluating Researcher as a Consumer Source- reliable? Peer-reviewed? Underlying purpose- sponsoring agencies, vested interests, money Methodology- unbiased, appropriate, & ethical? Results- how were data summarized, analyzed? Appropriate? Conclusions-Were conclusions appropriate? Over-generalized?

Qualities of a “good” researcher/consumer of research “Child-Like” Skepticism: question everything! Curiosity: a “questioning” nature, a drive to understand and explore. Open-minded: think “outside the box”. Believe the improbable might be true. Ethical: seek/search for “truth” without influence of money or social status Methodical/logical/organized (a little OCD helps!)

Tadpole Tales: The story of a young researcher