Evaluating your ideas and Reading the Literature Psych 231: Research Methods in Psychology

Announcements OOPS! Error on the library exercise in PIP packet (3) Should be: Using PsycInfo, find an article by Simone Nguyen & Gregory Murphy that was published in (NOT 1997) This assignment is due in labs next week, but I strongly suggest that you do the assignment as soon as you can

Where do ideas come from? Research is often driven by curiosity. We typically study things that interest us. Continuum of the development of research ideas InformalFormal “This is interesting. I’d like to know more.” “The theory says X. Let’s test the theory.” “We’ve got a problem to solve.” “We understand some things, but there are still questions.”

Where do ideas come from? Research is often driven by curiosity. Glueck & Jauck (1975): Examined where researchers tend to get their research ideas Self Literature Colleagues % of time get ideas from various sources

Idea origins Common Sense – things that we all think are true “Opposites attract” Nice social psych experiment, does this work? But note: a lot of our common sense is contradictory Absence makes the heart grow fonder Long distance affairs never last

Idea origins Common Sense Observation – both of others and of yourself Direct observation - includes public observation, self observation, observing children, observing animals Vicarious observation - what somebody else has observed and reported

Idea origins Common Sense Observation Past research – find out what research has already been done and ask yourself “what don’t we know still” Follow-up studies, expanding the past research in more detail or new directions Improvements on past research studies, maybe you think the past research had some serious flaws or limitations

Idea origins Common Sense Observation Past research Identify a problem – perhaps there is an important problem or issue that needs a (or some) solution(s). WWII - why do air force’s planes keep crashing? Led to early cognitive theories of attention

Idea origins Common Sense Observation Past research Identify a problem Ask the Experts – basically boils down to putting your trust in somebody else who says that they know what the research

Idea origins Common Sense Observation Past research Identify a problem Ask the Experts Stick with it and get lucky

Are my ideas good? Evaluate your idea Focus: Is your idea specified enough to be manageable ROT rule: Replicable - one time deal? Observable - can you measure it? Testable - can you test it & can you falsify it?

Replication Many interesting results are not accepted until they are replicated Cold fusion - the answer to all of our energy needs The results were never replicated and are not generally accepted by the scientific community Extrasensory perception (ESP) Some proponents claim that ESP only occurs under certain unknown conditions and that it is impossible to predict when the conditions are right.

Observable Many interesting questions may not be examined experimentally because they aren’t observable (either directly or indirectly). Do dogs think like humans? Since we can’t directly observe a dog’s thoughts, we can only make inferences about their thoughts via their behavior Is my experience of the color red the same as yours?

Testable Other hypotheses may not have objective testability (e.g., imaginary events) What if the terrorist attacks on 911 hadn’t happened Many interesting hypotheses are not testable until they are further specified There is no relationship between brain size and intelligence Stated as a negative, experimental method is designed to look for evidence of the existence of things Meditation affects how good one feels about oneself. Which direction? What counts as meditation? How much meditation? What does ‘feel good about oneself” mean?

Example: A research idea Getting the idea How do people remember? This is a pretty big question To begin to answer it we’ve got to FOCUS Break the general idea down into smaller more specific ideas Develop theories as to how & why Then we can begin using experiments to test parts of the theories

Example: A research idea Focusing the idea What does memory involve? Encoding - getting the memories in Storage - keeping the memories Retrieval - getting the memories out Are all kinds of memory the same? Procedural vs. declarative memories Pictures vs. words How long do memories last?

Example: A research idea Evaluating the idea Can we re-do the experiments, do we get similar results? How do we observe memory? Recall tests, “brain waves,”,,, Are our predictions testable? Reading the literature will help greatly with evaluating research ideas

Reading a research article What's the goal of a research article?  The reader to:  Know about the research  Understand what was done  Be convinced by the research (hopefully)  Standardization of research report format  APA style  Organization and content reflects the logical thinking in scientific investigation  Standardization helps with clarity  Read with a critical eye

The anatomy of a research article The basic parts of a research article :  Title and authors - gives you a general idea of the topic and specifically who did it  Abstract - short summary of the article  States the issue, the methods, major variables of interst, the findings, and the conclusions  (in 120 words or less)  First contact  Shows up in PsycInfo  Gets skimmed before reading the article

The anatomy of a research article  Introduction - gives you the background that you need  What are the issues  What is/are the theory(ies)  What does the past research say  What the rationale for doing this research  What are the specific hypotheses  Reading checklist 1) What is the author's goal? 2) What are the hypotheses? 3) If you had designed the experiment, how would YOU have done it?

The anatomy of a research article  Method - tells the reader exactly what was done  Enough detail that the reader could actually replicate the study.  Subsections:  Participants - who were the data collected from  Apparatus/ Materials - what was used to conduct the study  Procedure - how the study was conducted, what the participants did  Reading checklist 1 a) Is your method better than theirs? b) Does the authors method actually test the hypotheses? c) What are the independent, dependent, and control variables? 2) Based on what the authors did, what results do YOU expect?

The anatomy of a research article  Results - gives a summary of the results and the statistical tests  Reading checklist 1) Did the author get unexpected results? 2 a) How does the author interpret the results? b) How would YOU interpret the results? c) What implications would YOU draw from these results?

The anatomy of a research article  Discussion - the interpretation and implications of the results  Reading checklist 1 a) Does YOUR interpretation or the authors' interpretation best represent the data? b) Do you or the author draw the most sensible implications and conclusions?  References - full citations of all work cited  Appendices - additional supplementary supporting material

Next Week Download (full text available at library) and read the article for lab next week (German and Barrett, 2005) Have a good Labor Day See you on Wednesday