Transcript Theories - the Department of Psychology at Illinois State University

Evaluating your ideas and
Reading the Literature
Psych 231: Research
Methods in Psychology
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Don’t forget to do your library assignment!
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It is due in labs next week, but I strongly suggest that you do
the assignment as soon as you can while the info is still fresh in
your mind.
Also for next week’s lab, make sure that you download
and read the Raz, Kirsch, Polard, & Nitkin-Kaner, (2006)
before coming to lab.
Announcements
Great ideas
You
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“I’m not smart enough.”
“Somebody else must have already done this.”
“I don’t know how to pursue the idea.”
“It’s too simple, something must be wrong.”
“The idea will take too much work.”
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Do consider the practicality of the work load, but
don’t be afraid of hard work.
Classic barriers & mistakes
Great ideas
You
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“I’m not interested in the topic.”
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Glued to your first idea.
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Don’t procrastinate and take your time
Be flexible, adjust your idea as you learn more
“I can’t find any literature to review.”
Our goal is that you come away from this course with the
knowledge and ability to see past these pitfalls.
Classic barriers & mistakes cont.
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Evaluating your research ideas
Are my ideas good?
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Evaluating your research ideas
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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?
Are my ideas good?
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Many interesting results are not accepted until
they are replicated
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Cold fusion - a potential answer to our energy needs
• The results were never replicated and are not generally
accepted by the scientific community
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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.
Replication
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Many interesting questions may not be
examined experimentally because they aren’t
observable (either directly or indirectly).
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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
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Is my experience of the color blue the same as
yours?
Observable
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Other hypotheses may not have objective
testability (e.g., imaginary events)
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What if the dinosaurs hadn’t become extinct?
Many interesting hypotheses are not testable
until they are further specified
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Meditation affects how good one feels about oneself.
• Which direction? What counts as meditation? How much
meditation? What does ‘feel good about oneself” mean?
Testable
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Getting the idea
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How do people remember things?
• 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
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Focusing the idea
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What does memory involve?
• Encoding - getting the memories in
• Storage - keeping the memories
• Retrieval - getting the memories out
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Are all kinds of memory the same?
• Procedural vs. declarative memories
• Pictures vs. words
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How long do memories last?
Example: A research idea
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Evaluating the idea (ROT)
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Can we re-do the experiments, do we get similar
results?
How do we observe memory?
• Recall tests, recognition tests, “brain waves,” ,,,
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Are our predictions testable?
Reading the literature will help greatly with
evaluating research ideas
Example: A research idea
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How is it different from reading a novel?
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Style
Objectives
Structure
Reading a research article
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What's the goal of a research article?
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The reader to:
 Know about the research
 Understand what was done
 Be convinced by the research (hopefully)
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Standardization of research report format
 APA style
 Organization and content reflects the logical thinking in
scientific investigation
 Standardization helps with clarity
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Read with a critical eye
Reading a research article
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The basic parts of a research article
The anatomy of a research article
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The basic parts of a research article:
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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
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The basic parts of a research article :
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Introduction - gives you the background that you
need
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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
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The basic parts of a research article :
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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
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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
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The basic parts of a research article :
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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
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The basic parts of a research article :
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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?
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References - full citations of all work cited
Appendices - additional supplementary
supporting material
The anatomy of a research article
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Download Raz, Kirsch, Polard, & Nitkin-Kaner, (2006)
(full text available at library) and read the article
for lab next week.
Quiz 2 is due Wednesday before class (1 week
from today)
Have a good Labor Day
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See you on Wednesday
Next Week