Getting started

I created a separate document for getting started in this class, it covers some technical aspects as well as some perspective. So you should check that out first. See document at Getting Started

Introduction

In many ways the teaching of science makes it sound easy. In the physical sciences like chemistry and physics and biology there is often a lot of emphasis placed on the technology necessary to do those disciplines. As there should be.

But with that, it can happen that people begin to equate the scientific method with the use of technology.

This is simply wrong. I’m not saying those who practice physical sciences or even teach science in those disciplines are suggesting that the technology is what makes science possible.

Technology makes doing science somewhat easier. And it may help us discover things that would impossible without it (imagine immunology without a microscope).

Unfortunately in the social sciences we really don’t have technology in the same way that medicine has an MRI scan or how physics can you use particle collider.

We have to do something different. We have to think more deeply about constructs. Ideas. Relationships. We have to think very clearly about the relationships between ideas. All science does this, but the social sciences have a larger burden because so much of what happens in that discipline is less tangible than the material found in physical sciences.

And Psychology has serious problems as a science. Not because it’s unscientific but because a lot of the practitioners of the science in Psychology are not thinking well, and therefore aren’t doing science well.

And as I teach this class I worry about my own incompetence because I appreciate how hard things are. None-the-less, here we are.

So when I think about how to teach research methods in the context of psychology, I have to ask myself of the following, upon which do we focus?

Focus issue Area of expertise
Why does a particular event happen the way it does? Is there a model that explains this? –Theory expertise
What work in this discipline has already been completed? –Library expertise
Given a question or hypothesis, how do we perform an experiment so that the results of the experiment demonstrate temporal precedence, correlation, andrules out other explanations? —Methods expertise
To perform those methods, what logistical and program management needs exist? —Project management expertise
Given the nature of the data, the methods of collecting the data, what statistical decisions need to be made to interpret this research? —Statistical expertise
How do we document and share our process of discovery? Who writes the report for publication? —Writing expertise
Given this project, how is one to pay for it? Who writes the grant application? —Funding expertise
Focus issue Area of expertise
Why does a particular event happen the way it does? Is there a model that explains this? –Theory expertise
Human Participant review boards -Ethical expertise
What work in this discipline has already been completed? –Library expertise
Given a question or hypothesis, how do we perform an experiment so that the results of the experiment demonstrate temporal precedence, correlation, andrules out other explanations? —Methods expertise
How do we document and share our process of discovery? Who writes the report for publication? —Writing expertise
Focus issue Area of expertise
To perform those methods, what logistical and program management needs exist? —Project management expertise
Given the nature of the data, the methods of collecting the data, what statistical decisions need to be made to interpret this research? —Statistical expertise
Given this project, how is one to pay for it? Who writes the grant application? —Funding expertise

Week 1

Goals (not the assignment…just orienting ideas)

By the end of this week 1, I would like for you to have gotten a bit familiar with slack, and Google Documents, and maybe even flirted with downloading and installing Zotero. Regarding Zotero, I intend to make a quick video or document showing the steps of getting it up and running So you can afford to put that off.

Conceptually, though, there’s some very big ideas that I hope you have a chance to learn. Broadly speaking, these ideas include what we mean by epistemology and it’s sub-fields, the relationship between critical thinking and science, your own personal definition of what science is, and probably the most important abstract idea will be John Stuart Mill’s 3 criteria for proving causality.

Here are some key questions:

How do you know, what you know?

What is empiricism?

You may have to look the following up:

  • What is pragmatism, in the context of science?
  • What is realism, in the context of science?
  • What is constructivism, in the context of science?

What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?

If a logical statement is contradicted by empirical discovery, which one would you prefer to believe? Can you justify that?

How should researchers evaluate the quality of the research?

What are the practical steps of the scientific method? Do they at all relate to Critical thinking? How?

What biases should researchers be concerned about?

First do the following

Open a google doc and write down some responses to the following prompts. Write a paragraph or 2, and don’t try to incorporate any of the other reading below. Give your your page a title (not the document, the page–you can title your document as you wish). Here are the prompts:

what is your process for thinking clearly?

How do you know something is true?

Then Read/watch:

  1. The syllabus

  2. Miller’s law of communication (in the syllabus)

  3. George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946 (in the syllabus)

  4. The 9 standards of Critical thinking (in the syllabus)

  5. Textbook, Chapter 1 Science of Psych

  6. Textbook, Chapter 2 The scientific Method

  7. Read Schwartz (2008), The importance of stupidity in scientific research

  8. Look up the definition for the following concepts using 3 non-self-referential sources (in other words, don’t use a source that references one of your other sources):

  • Hypothetical Construct
  • Reification
  • Triangulation
  1. Watch the following Youtube vids by Srivastava (2020) (don’t panic if you can’t watch them all)
  1. Watch Holt (2020) video on Science

Do the following

  1. Introduce yourself in Slack channel #introductions

  2. On the same google doc, make a new page [Cmd or control + ‘enter’] and write down some of your interests in psychology. Remember that this will be a public document. If you have some ideas you want to write down privately, make a separate doc. These ideas may develop into research questions

  3. In the same google doc, and again, with a new page and title, write a reflective/summary/reaction to the reading material above. Don’t summarize, synthesize. Your mind may be swirling about many ideas of epistemology and science, but try to write down some ideas that you have–things you’ve learned, emotional reactions to things that have been said. In fact, pay close attention to your feelings as you read things; if something controversial comes up, you’ll feel it pretty quickly. These feelings can be guides for your own curiosities and fears/biases. In google docs, highlight your title, go to ‘insert’ –> ‘bookmark.’ You’ll see a little blue icon and the word ‘link’ next to it. Copy that link and post it in #4…

  4. Post this link to the Slack Channel ‘week-1-reflection’

  5. Read some posts by your class mates. Commenting is optional.

Week 2 Jan. 11

Broad comment/Guidance

For week 2 we’re getting into more practical ideas about controlling an experiment to manage confounds. Confounds, or confound variables, are variables that muddle interpretation of experimental outcomes.

If you do a psychological experiment on whether different personalities manage stress differently, you need to account for people’s mood. If you ignore mood, it can systematically interfere with your dependent variable. And so any outcomes in your research will be uninterpretable you can say it’s been confounded.

I have made a blank Google document that anyone with the link can edit. The purpose of this is for you all as students to an honest book anonymously write down ideas, broad topics really, about psychology that you would want to research.

The goal would be for me as your instructor to curate and guide you all into finding a practical and simple experiment that we can do in this class that is tied to the broad topic.

The motivation is for you to be able to study something of interest, but for your instructor to keep it simple enough that the process is both educational and satisfying, and not so complicated that it becomes impossible.

Goals

  • You should have some introductory appreciation for concepts and vocabulary from chapter 5. They are in the book’s glossary. You’ll find that it’s overwhelming to try to memorize them all, but many are synonyms and point to similar concepts. Here they are in their glory
experiment treatment condition matched-groups design external validity
independent variable control condition within-subjects experiment mundane realism
dependent variable randomized clinical trial order effect psychological realism
conditions no-treatment control condition carryover effect construct validity
control placebo practice effect operationalization
extraneous variables placebo effect fatigue effect Statistical validity
manipulate placebo control condition context effect (or contrast effect) subject pool
single factor two-level design wait-list control condition counterbalancing experimenter expectancy effect
single factor multi level design between-subjects experiment complete counterbalancing double-blind study
confounding variable random assignment random counterbalancing  manipulation check
treatment block randomization internal validity pilot test

  • How to organize these vocabulary? My advice would be to try to mind map them. Like draw some pictures or flow-diagrams, (?Venn diagrams?) where the terms cluster together. This is not a requirement. I’m just saying that I would NOT try to brute force memorize these terms. Instead, start looking for relationships. I might demonstrate this.

  • Key ideas in this chapter are some classic techniques for dealing with John Stuart Mill’s three criteria of causality, ruling out other explanations. But in particular this chapter on experimentation is about the management of confound variables.

  • You should also be able to draw a basic DAG

  • If you want to test your learning on this chapter, try describing an experiment that proves tapping on an agitated soda can (no, not an angry one) will reduce the amount of carbonated fizz the escapes upon opening.

Flow diagram for class

This will probably always be a draft. I showed this a bit to you on Monday. I think it’s mostly done, which means it’s mostly for me to wrap my head around timing of work. The first month is ridiculously fast but needed for the rest of the quarter to work out.

Methods Flow diagram

Read the following

  1. John Stewart Mill (JSM) on Causality
  • Lots of ideas about the philosophy of causality
  • JSM basically says the following 3 are necessary:
    • Must establish a correlation between variables
    • Must establish temporal precedence
    • Must rule out all other explanations
      • this last one is the hardest

  1. Textbook, Chapter 5 The Experimental Method Possibly the most important chapter for the quarter

  2. Textbook, Chapter 3 Research Ethics yes, okay, this is very important too

  3. DAG DAG DAG…Description and some vids

Do the following

  1. In your main google doc, the one to rule them all, make a page of 6-10 psychological topics that you’d like to perform an experiment. By the end of the week, you will want to highlight 3 likely candidates

  2. With any or all of your ideas from #1, contribute to the brainstorming google doc mentioned above.

  3. Pick one of your ideas, and see if you can hand draw a DAG. https://excalidraw.com/ might serve you well. Be sure to save your work…you can download it as a text file (technically json file type) or just save it as an image. You don’t have to share these, but you could put them in your google doc

  4. Make another page in your google doc, title it Ethics summary (or something), and in your own words, summarize the very big and broad ideas you picked up from chapter 3. Keep this somewhat brief. Go for pith.

  5. Do the same for Chapter 5 (new page, new title, etc.)

5a. Make a post with chapters 3,5 ideas and post to #week-2

  1. See what a few of your classmates have written; comment if you wish. By the way, when you hover your mouse over a person’s post, you should see a little floating menu. One of the icons allows you to make a threaded reply. It makes a side thread.

Week 3 January 18

Orientation

What follows below is predominately individual work that is going to be used to cross over into more group work.

This week is somewhat of a transitional week which complicates my instructions.

On the one hand you need to keep practicing our individual understandings of research methods, dags, causal storytelling.

On the other hand we need to get into groups. But getting into groups it’s somewhat of its own process and is going to take place over the next few days. I hope is that by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest we have our groups, so that we have a a week to put together a very rough draft of experiment that we could apply to the human subjects research committee.

So, even though we may not be in groups at the beginning of the week, we can at least start looking at North Seattle requirements for a application and we can continue to practice thinking about our causal diagrams– The dags

Goals

  • Early in the week pick a group/topic (tough given time pace)

  • See the application materials for applying to North Seattle College’s Human Subject Review Committee (HSRC)

  • Begin drafting, debating, drafting, drawing more DAG’s, drafting some rough ideas for experiments

Read the following

  1. Read the application requirements for Human Subject Review Committee located on the North Seattle College’s website
    • skim/read each of the link documents, including the links to the Belmont Report and Nuremberg Code
    • I do not expect that you read the Belmont and Nuremberg documents in their entirety, but pay attention that they are there and are covered by our Textbook
    • While reading make some notes to yourself about word choices that trigger questions for you
    • for example, what does “minimal risk” mean?
  2. Skim/Read the following University of Washington Document
    • Notice how this document is different than what is found at North.
    • Don’t get too lost in doing a compare/contrast with every line. My intention about this assignment is for you to see that
      1. institutions that are serious about ethics will minimally have a webpage like this and
      2. recognize that the scope of the UW is much more broad compared to North.

After reading/watching the above…

Do the following

  1. Review the anatomy of a journal article, found in Getting started, appendix, anatomy…

  2. Write a brief outline or flow diagram, whatever, for running an experiment on one of your personal research ideas. Keep it simple. This is an individual assignment, so put it into your ‘one doc to rule them all.’

Instructor Note to future self …this particular step, #2, assumes that student would do an individual dag that’s related to a group that they have yet to be assigned. So, maybe group forming week 1. 

* Put your attention on to a basic hypothesis and the Method (as described in #1). 
  * Essentially, this is a very rough draft of a proposal.  
  * a pandemic testable hypothesis is what we are going after
  * draw a rough draft DAG of the related variables.
  * if you drew this on paper at home, take a picture of it and paste it into your google doc
For example, If I were to continue my example from the virtual meeting:

Hypothesis

People induced into a mild sad mood will indicate higher levels of introversion as measured by the Big Five personality test.

Methods

Participants

People recruited from North Seattle College’s social science classes Winter 2021, maybe some subReddit

Materials

Simple, short version of The Big Five personality test Beck depression inventory Song ‘Hurt’ covered by Johnny Cash,originally by Nine Inch Nails. Reznor (1994)

Procedure

After providing informed consent, participants will be given a link to a Google form that we’ll begin with instructions. The first section of this Google form Will be differ based on the experimental condition. Some participants will be given a link to a YouTube video of Johnny Cash’s version of the song Hurt originally by Nine Inch Nails. other participants will be given a link to a picture of a tree.

The instructions will say to listen to or watch the stimulus for 3 minutes. while viewing participants will be instructed to make some notes about their thoughts and feelings.

After the 3 minutes, the participants will be invited to go fill out the Beck Depression Inventory and a survey which will include questions from the Big Five personality test in particular the level of introversion.

References

Optional at this point…but get into the habit of thinking about these.

  1. Pick/be-assigned-to a group. More on this later.

  2. In your chosen #group-channel, post your Dag but without a narrative describing it.

  3. Look at 3 of your classmates’ Dags (in your topic channel) and try to add a narrative to the Dag in a comment.

  4. In your chosen group #channel, see if you can find agreement on a simple hypothesis

    • The goal is to have an application filled by week 6, so we should have about 2.5 weeks to do that. But here it begins.

Week 4 Jan 25

Orientation

There’s a lot to do and of course never enough time to do it.

Foreground:

Hash out a reasonably clear hypothesis that could serve as a springboard for our work. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But we do need something for our application to the human subject research committee (HSRC) in 1 to 2 weeks.

Think about what, if any, harm the experiment may cause. What is the impact? What would be the impact on someone who has, schizophrenia, for an extreme example? If we don’t want to harm someone with schizophrenia, what could we do to protect them?

Background:

Think about the actual logistics of an experiment. This will become more foreground as the week progresses.

Honor the difficulty in group work.

Goals

Our goals are to:

  • Produce a draft of a hypothesis, materials, and procedure grounded in some very naive understanding of our group topic. In other words, what are the:

    • Hypotheses
    • Independent Variable(s)
    • Dependent Variable(s)
    • Extraneous/confounds Variable(s)

  • Eventually a procedure (probably more next week)

    • what materials will participants see.
    • in what order will they see them
    • how will you control all of this so they can’t subvert the logic of your experiment?

  • Become familiar with issues of measurement, paying particular attention to the following:

    • Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio Forms of measurement.

    • The different kinds of validates and reliabilities.

  • Have basic exposure to alternative methods to ‘true/lab’ based experiments in chapter 5. Quasi-experiments (chapter 8).

Lastly, and this mostly falls on me but as a class we’ll need to think about some tech in how we can actually get participants to our experiments. Your instructor can get word out for students to participate; possible participants could have a link to a website or something…but we need to think about ‘then what?’ How do we control how a participant would be assigned to one group/condition vs another. Again, this falls on the instructor a lot.

Read the following

  1. Template for proposal and application

    • Notice that with the application to the HSRC, you aren’t having to provide all of the details of your experiment. The hypothesis yes, but to the degree that you are communicating what, if any, harm is being done to participants, whether the harm is necessary, and then how to mitigate the effects of that harm. Google document for proposal and application

  2. Group Processes

    • Doing group work is hard. There are a lot of complexities to doing group work. People take classes on how to do groups. It is totally reasonable to have concern about how group conflict can derail a project.

    • But groups can also save time. Instead of your instructor giving feedback on 24 different projects, they can help several groupings of students more quickly.

    • Groups can disperse work load, and group members can help each other with various edges of development.

    • The following document is often presented as a classic way to think about how groups form and eventually work. Skim it, and note that I’m not a fan of the language. But it does capture the patterns of group formation: Some basics of group work

    • Your instructor will do their best to help manage any difficulty that arises from group work.

  3. Read the following 3 chapters.

    A. Textbook, Chapter 4 Psychological Measurement

    B. Textbook, Chapter 7 Survey Research

    C. Textbook, Chapter 8 Quasi-experimental research

    • It’s a lot. You may want to consider having group mates read 1 chapter while taking notes, and then share the work. For example, each person may read just 1 chapter, but all 3 chapters are covered by at least 2 people:
Person Chapter
a 4
b 4
c 7
d 7
e 8
f 8

On the other hand, if a group of 6 divides the work so that each person reads 2 chapters, then each chapter will have 4 different people looking at it: So, 2 people read ch’s 4 and 7, 2 people read ch’s 7 and 8, 2 people read ch’s 4 and 8.

Person Chapter
a,b 4,7
c,d 7,8
e,f 4,8

Returns:

Chapter Person
4 a,b,e,f
7 a,b,c,d
8 c,d,e,f

The 2nd approach may ensure that each chapter has it’s secrets uncovered. It certainly doesn’t have to be this complicated. It is really up to you.

  1. Another DAG vid, 11 minutes

Do the following

  1. Find 2-3 sources on your group topic (if you haven’t already).

    • Track their references
    • Write a quick blurb about what they did

  2. In your one document to rule them all, write down some brainstorm ideas. Maybe some dags, maybe some hypotheses. Your audience for this will be your group-mates. Post links in your group channel to your work. Have this done sooner than later. many of you are already doing this. Yay!

  3. After watching the DAG video above, see if there are new paths in your personal DAG that might lend itself to an experiment or quasi-experiment. many of you are already doing this. Yay!

    • we should be able to talk about some of these ideas Friday

  4. By end of the week, groups should have some very rough drafts of:

  • A hypothesis for instructor to review
  • Independent and Dependent variables
  • bonus for some possible materials of these variables
  • A skeletal outline or flow chart for what a participant would do in the experiment. Very light. Something that your instructor can use to at least picture a process from the POV of the participant.

Week 5 Feb 1

goals

  • To decide upon specific surveys and materials for the study, with a special urgency on any material that may ethically impact a participant.

    • In other words, if one of your materials presented to a participant is a potentially triggering image, we definitely need to include it in our application to the Human Subject Review Committee (HSRC)

  • Get as close as possible to finishing the HSRC application this week. The goal would be Friday.

  • To have Clarity between the instructor and your groups process for the research-group-to-student-to-survey-data pipeline.

  • To do first self-reflection

Read some stuff

  1. How to make survey google docs (under construction..maybe a video?)

  2. Textbook, Chapter 9 Factorial Designs

  3. Textbook, Chapter 12 Descriptive stats

  4. Review chapter on Surveys

  5. Read/skim Nancy Chick, Metacognition

  6. Read/skim Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Grades

Do the following

  1. Group process survey

  2. Do A self-reflection quiz

    • Take a look and then go for a walk or something and let yourself ponder these questions

    • the text boxes you see in this ‘quiz’ will expand to accommodate what you need to write. In other words, don’t feel like you must only say like 3 words.

    • When filling out the self-reflection survey, take a look at the research methods syllabus and pay attention to our course and program outcomes to think about what you are learning.

  3. Review and give thoughts about process for obtaining participants

    • this might be a different process depending on survey/materials for your group’s experiment. You can reply in that slack thread…(don’t reply under, reply ‘in thread’)

  4. Assign people to tasks. I recommend the following tasks

    • lit review (everyone)
    • Create/find survey (2-3 people)
    • Filling out application to HSRC (2 people)
      • inludes managing informed consent and debriefing documents
      • Will eventually need example materials/surveys
    • outline and move towards a final procedure (2-3 people)

  5. Draft a proposal (individually) –this is for your development but can be used to synthesize with other students in your group. Here is an outline of a proposal

  6. Post your individual proposals (of group project) to #week-5-proposals

    • when you post, tag 3 class members who are not in your group using the @ symbol and their name. Ask them to give feedback on some part of your proposal. You can ask for help on how to be more clear, for example. The key is for you to identify some aspect of your proposal and have others outside your gruop comment. Ask for their help!

  7. By Friday(ish) as a group have some agreed upon outline of a proposal. The proposal is your groups guiding document. We may make changes to it as the quarter goes, but it’s effectively our blueprint.

  8. Submit HSRC application before February 8th.

Week 6 Feb 8

Goals: to get back into the swing of thinking about writing and to practice drawing graphs and making some quant predictions.

Read the following

  1. Textbook, Chapter 12 Descriptive stats–yes..here again

  2. Skim this, Textbook, Chapter 10 Single-subject research

  3. When you read Craft of research, remember I’m not testing you on this. I’m hoping to expose you to a well written book that discusses a particular kind of thinking. While reading, take notes about things that grab your attention.

  4. Read Chapter 1 of the Craft of research

  5. Look at the table of contents for Chapter 4-6..read whatever grabs you. Or not.

  6. Read chapter 7

  7. Make sure you have a system for references. Revisit, if necessary, video instructions on using zotero. Seek instructor guidance about using that tool

Do the following

  1. Write a paragraph or so in your one document to rule them all that summarizes your thoughts about the craft of research readings. Share in the #craft-research channel

  2. Using your proposal as a draft, create a new document outside of your One-doc-to-rule, and create a full-fledged outline for the whole paper you’ll be writing. Many parts will be empty or very light in terms of completeness. I’m hoping that this doc captures your work for the final paper that you’ll be writing along side your group.

    • Make a link of this document (share settings anyone can comment) and put it into your “one-doc-to rule.” Give that section a title and create a bookmark (insert—>bookmark) and share this to #Capstone.
    • you may be wondering about how this document will be same/different from your group work. The intention is for you to have your own place to write about the project from your point of view. This document may have significant differences of interpretation/focus than what your group settles on. You’ll all have the same data of course.
      • This would also serve as a part of a portfolio contribution that you can claim complete ownership on.
      • Your group will make a final group presentation together, but will not be writing a final group paper.

  3. In your one-doc-to-rule, make quant predictions of your outcome variables organized by group/IV (The descriptive stats chapter will help)

    • For instance, what will be the average and standard deviation of your outcome variable for each group (control vs. experimental)?
    • Does your research question have any predictions on correlations?
    • if so, which variables will correlate, what will their correlation be?

  4. In the same section of your one-doc-to-rule, make or link to a graph (not a dag) that shows what you expect/hope to find and put it in your one-doc-to-rule. Share to #graphs channel. You don’t have to use exaclidraw. Draw using something at home, take a picture, and insert it into your google doc if that is easier.

Rough Draft schedule final weeks

Week 7 Feb 15

I’m trying something new by adding due dates in three places. Here at the top and then in the ‘read/do stuff’ for each week, and then finally in linear form at the end of our whole document here.

Due dates

Read some stuff

Do some stuff

Group work:

  • Return Information to HSRC Feb 18 Thursday End of Day
    • Imposter materials
    • updated Informed consent
    • updated debriefing
  • Must have First contact script ready for trial runs
    • Due Feb 20
      • Some Trial runs by Sunday Feb 21
        • So that we can hopefully send invitations Monday Feb 22

Individual work

  • Complete a good proposal (which you’ve been working on) by Feb 25 +/- days. This proposal should be morphing into a paper by end of quarter.
    • I recommend making a copy and paste of this so that your proposal is captured in time, now, but that you carry it further into your one-doc to rule to start editing and finishing. However, this might not be your workflow. I am only hoping you can find a way to take a snap shot of your process now so that it can persist. How you do that is up to you. I recommend doing this every now and again
      • Taking snap shots for writing can be useful but admittedly it’s not natural to do. Usually you would just keep tweaking and adding. But remember that I’m wanting your one document to rule them all to serve as a rough draft of a portfolio. You may not want to use it that way but it helps me as your instructor to see changes, and it also serves as a way to show your instructor changes.
  • Basic descriptive stats assignment due March 1 Post to #Stats

Week 8 Feb 22

Due dates

  • Start data collection on Feb 22 +/- days
  • Submit suggested ideas for data analysis to group channel on March 5.
  • Draft of your final paper. Submit to channel #final-paper, March 8 (it’s a draft).

Read/watch the following

Stats

I have a few videos for you to watch, as necessary. The first two are from some twitter statisticians that I follow. My video is about 20 minutes long but I’ve broken out the key ideas, hopefully, at strategic places so if you want to skip around or come back to a section you can. The presentation slides that goes along with Brian’s videos can be found here: presentation slides

Intro to Histograms

Normal Distributions

  • How to do an analysis

There is something missing here. Not sure the best way to provide guidance here.

Do the following

Group

  • Start data collection on Feb 22 +/- days
  • Draft some analysis plans. Don’t actually do analysis.

This will be a very difficult time because it requires that groups be on the same page of knowledge. What is a number (see Textbook Chapter 4, Psychological Measurement), what kind of comparisons are appropriate for the research question (Chapter 13 Inferential stats). Brian anticipates lots of complexity.

  • Monitor data collection
    • This means to just take a peak that data is being collected, looking for odd behavior that might indicate some technical trouble.

Don’t look at the data with an eye for analysis. Temping, I know, but it’s best to just let data happen as time goes on.

  • Draft some presentation slides (see textbook this week on presenting research)

Individual

  • Review inferential stats, think about which analyses would be appropriate based on data type and comparisons. This is hard/complex.
    • Submit to group channel March 8. Yes..March 8.
  • Organize and add to the literature review for your paper/proposal as needed. It’s okay to help and share with your group.
  • Draft work on your paper. Submit to channel #final-paper, March 8 (again, it’s a draft).
    • More work on the first half of the paper:
      • Introduction
      • setting up hypothesis
      • explaining the materials
      • procedure with the understanding that info on participants will be missing (dependent on data collection) as will results and discussion.

Week 9 Data Analysis Plan Mar 1

Due Date

  • Self reflection due March 5 +/- days
  • Submit suggested ideas for data analysis to group channel on March 5.
  • Group Agree on data analysis by March 8
  • Group Draft Presentation March 11 for review on March 12 (class)

Read Some Stuff

  • Read what you need.

Do Some Stuff

Individual

  • Continue drafting final papers
  • Self reflection due March 5 +/- days
  • Submit suggested ideas for data analysis to group channel on March 5.

Group

  • Agree on data analysis by March 8
    • This will be a simple, basic, not hugely complicated analysis. Most groups will either be a test of proportion (differences), t-tests, maybe Anova, maybe a cor relational test.
  • Start populating your presentation. Data/results will be missing.
    • Have something March 11 so we can review on Friday march 12

Week 10 Finish Data collection March 8

Due Dates

  • Finish data collection March 8 +/- days
  • group presentation March 19, Friday
  • Post some notes on threats to validity by March 19

Read some stuff

  • Read/review what you may need.
  • threats to validity
    • There is a lot in this document. I recommend trying to find 3-4 threats to validity in your group’s work and make some notes/outlines about them. I hope you can find at least one threat to Interal validity.
      • This may be very useful in writing your discussion.

Do Some stuff

Individual

  • Keep drafting/editing/revising your final paper
  • Write some notes on threats to validity. These could be questions, concrete issues in your group’s work. Shoot for a paragraph. Post to #threats-validity by March 15

Group

  • Okay, here we go.
  • Follow your analysis plan from March 8
  • Start thinking/writing/drafting for conclusion of work:
    • Discussion,
    • Procedure issues issues,
    • trouble interpreting,
    • wish for do over and other kubler ross stages of grief

Week 11 Group Present Mar 15

Due Dates

  • Finish group presentation March 19, Friday

Do some stuff

  • Finish group presentation March 19, Friday, to present last day of zoom meets

Week 12 “Finals” Mar 22

Due Dates in linear form

  • (Group) Return Information to HSRC: Feb 18 Thursday End of Day
  • (Group) First contact script ready for trial runs: Feb 20
  • (Group) Start data collection on Feb 22 +/- days
  • (Individual) Complete a good proposal by Feb 25 +/- days.
  • (Individual) * Basic descriptive stats assignment due March 1 Post to #Stats
  • (Individual) Self reflection due March 5 +/- days
  • (Individual) Submit suggested ideas for data analysis to group channel on March 5.
  • (Group) Agree on data analysis by March 8
  • (Individual) Submit suggested ideas for data analysis to group channel on March 8.
  • (Individual) Draft of your final paper. Submit to channel #final-paper, March 8 (it’s a draft).
  • (Group) Finish data collection March 8 +/- days
  • (Group) Draft Presentation March 11 for review on March 12 (class)
  • (Group) Presentation March 19, Friday
  • (Individual) Post some notes on threats to validity by March 19
  • (Group) Finish group presentation March 19, Friday
  • (Individual) Final paper due Last day of quarter, Due March 24
  • (Individual) Final self reflection Due March 24

References

Holt, Brian C. 2020. “Research Methods - Youtube Playlist.” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDEwZwMNQswtzHN-VHRp2e6FzlEsLIVwO.

Reznor, Trent. 1994. “Hurt.” A&M Studios.

Schwartz, Martin A. 2008. “The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research.” Journal of Cell Science 121 (11): 1771–71. https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.033340.

Srivastava, Sanjay. 2020. “Sanjay Srivastava - Research Methods Videos.” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9v-A_PEgk5Wqmp130kRNqQ/playlists.