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1669 results in Psychology research methods and statistics

Page 48 of 84

  • 9 - Commonly Misused Words

  • from Part II - Presenting Your Ideas in Writing
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 176-199

  • Summary

    This chapter explains the meanings of some of the most commonly misused words in student papers. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first part deals with meanings of nontechnical terms. Dowling (2008) provides an extensive overview of misused words, and Garner (2009) provides a complete dictionary of American usage. The second part of the chapter deals with meanings of technical terms. The psychological dictionaries and encyclopedias described in Chapter 3 provide much more extensive lists of psychological terms.

    NONTECHNICAL TERMS

    1. adapt, adopt. To adapt is to accommodate, to adjust, to bring into correspondence. To adopt is to embrace, to take on, to make one's own.

  • a. Organisms adapt to their environment.

  • b. Children adopt the attitudes of their peers.

    • 2. adopt. See (1).

    3. affect, effect. Both words can be used either as nouns or as verbs. An affect is an emotion or something that tends to arouse an emotion. An effect is a result or outcome of some cause. To affect is to influence or to have an effect on something. To effect is to accomplish or to bring about.

  • a. His display of affect in response to the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test) picture seemed artificial and contrived to gain the psychologist's sympathy.

  • b. The effect of the experimental treatment was negligible.

  • c. Shoddy procedures affect the outcome of an experiment.

  • d. She was able to effect a change in behavior by desensitizing the patient to snakes.

    • 4. aggravate, irritate. To aggravate is to intensify, to heighten, or to magnify. To irritate is to annoy, to inflame, to provoke.

  • a. Don't aggravate his frustration by telling him that he answered all the questions incorrectly.

  • b. Experimenters who deceive subjects often irritate the subjects.

    • 5.allusion. An allusion is an indirect reference. An explicit statement about X is not an allusion to X.

  • a. The first experimenter made an allusion to a reward for exceptional performance, but she never came out and directly told the subject that the subject would receive a reward.

  • b. The second experimenter told the subject he would receive a reward for exceptional performance. (He did not allude to a reward.)

The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
  • A Guide to Success for College Students
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Karin Sternberg
  • Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017
  • Tailored specifically for undergraduate students, this Companion offers uniquely comprehensive coverage of the topics necessary for successful communication in psychology, making it a valuable resource for research methods and introductory psychology courses. Readers will learn how to effectively plan and write papers in accordance with the latest style guidelines from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition; present data in posters and talks; and evaluate their own and others' work. The clear writing style and reader-friendly format, meanwhile, allow students to absorb information easily, even when reading chapters selectively or out of order. The book includes numerous up-to-date examples drawn from career experiences to engage students and help them apply what they've learned to forward their own careers, while questions encourage them to think more deeply about larger issues in the field, preparing them for future research.

  • 6 - Planning and Writing the Experimental Research Paper

  • from Part I - Planning and Formulating Papers
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 88-131

  • Summary

    When research psychologists talk about writing a paper, they are talking about a lengthy and complicated chain of events that includes a great deal more than just reporting research results. In this chapter, we outline these events from start to finish:

    1. Planning your experimental research project

  • ■ getting an idea

  • ■ selecting independent variables

  • ■ selecting dependent variables

  • ■ deciding on between-subjects and within-subjects variables

  • ■ deciding how data will be analyzed

  • ■ selecting participants

  • ■ choosing experimental materials

  • ■ choosing a means of presenting experimental materials

  • ■ writing directions

  • ■ deciding on a means of scoring data

  • ■ writing a consent form

  • ■ writing a debriefing sheet

  • ■ getting approval from the institutional review board

  • ■ conducting a pilot study

    • 2. Executing the experimental research

    3. Data analysis

    4. Reporting the experimental research

  • ■ title

  • ■ author's name and institutional affiliation

  • ■ abstract

  • ■ introduction

  • ■ method

  • ■ results

  • ■ discussion

  • ■ references

  • ■ appendix

  • ■ order of sections

    • PLANNING EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

    Getting an Idea

    The basis of any good research is a viable idea that results in a study that contributes to the current state of knowledge. However, getting ideas, and especially getting good ideas, often turns out to be one of the hardest parts of research. If you need help forming ideas for your research, please read Chapter 2.

    Selecting Independent Variables

    After you have come up with an idea, you need a way to test it. To test the idea, you need one or more independent variables. In random-assignment experiments (i.e., experiments in which participants are randomly assigned to groups), independent variables are those variables that are manipulated by the experimenter. In an experiment to test people's susceptibility to persuasive communications, for example, possible independent variables include (a) amount of exposure to persuasive communications, (b) content of persuasive communications, and (c) level of agreement between participants’ initial attitudes and the position advocated by the persuasive communications. Once you have chosen your independent variable(s), you must decide how many and what level of them to use. For example, you might include in a persuasibility experiment three levels of exposure to the persuasive communications (no exposure, 10 minutes of exposure, and 1 hour of exposure) and two communications (one message dealing with capital punishment and one message dealing with compulsory use of seat belts in cars).

  • Preface

  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp ix-x

  • Summary

    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates is intended for college students seeking inspiration and definitive guidelines for better scientific communication and success. The book covers topics such as misconceptions about psychology papers; rules for writing literature reviews and experimental papers; how best to make use of the Internet in research; content, language, and style guidelines; commonly misused words; guidelines for data presentation; standards for evaluating papers; preparing posters; and how to write talks and papers.

    Some readers will work their way through this book from cover to cover. Others will read only selected chapters. For the sake of the latter readers, we sometimes have repeated in later chapters material mentioned in earlier chapters. If a point is relevant to a chapter, we include it to ensure that readers can learn it.

  • 7 - Ethics in Research and Writing

  • from Part I - Planning and Formulating Papers
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 132-146

  • Summary

    Ethics is of utmost importance when doing research and later writing about it. There are many ways to get tripped up ethically in both research and writing. This chapter summarizes some of the pitfalls and gives you advice as to how to avoid them.

    RESEARCH ISSUES

    A number of ethical issues arise in psychological research (as well as in medical and other research). Some of the main issues involve deception, pain, the ethics of research on animals, and confidentiality.

    Deception

    Sometimes, for research to work, participants must be kept unaware of the purpose of the research until it is completed. In some cases, however, psychologists have used extreme forms of deception. Stanley Milgram (1974) led participants to believe that they were delivering painful electric shocks to another person, when in fact they were not. When Milgram carried out his studies, researchers were generally not required to obtain advance approval of their plans to conduct a psychological investigation. Another ethical issue arises when researchers pay participants to indulge in a vice, as when researchers pay alcoholics to drink to study their drinking behavior. Today, deception is permitted in research only when the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.

    Informed Consent

    Before participants begin their involvement in a study, they are required to give informed consent to participate in the research. In the informed-consent procedure, the individuals are told what kinds of tasks they may be expected to perform and what kinds of situations they may expect to encounter, with specific qualifications on the use of deception. They are also told that they may withdraw from the study without penalty. It is unethical to run a study without informed consent. For children or others who are not capable of giving fully informed consent, it is necessary to obtain informed consent as well from a parent or other guardian.

    Experience is the Best Teacher

    Bob knows a tenured faculty member who planned a series of experiments and decided informally to test some pilot subjects in order to fine-tune his materials in advance of submitting them to his IRB. The IRB caught wind of what the faculty member was doing and made a formal accusation of academic misconduct against him. He ended up losing his privilege of testing subjects for an extended period of time.

  • 2 - Eight Common Misconceptions About Psychology Papers

  • from Part I - Planning and Formulating Papers
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 10-25

  • Summary

    Students often have misconceptions about the writing process and characteristics of good papers that effectively prevent them from writing as good a paper as they possibly could. Here are eight common misconceptions you should be aware of before you even begin writing:

  • 1. Writing the psychology paper is the most routine, least creative aspect of the scientific enterprise, requiring much time but little imagination.

  • 2. The important thing is what you say, not how you say it.

  • 3. Longer papers are better papers, and more papers are better yet.

  • 4. The main purpose of a psychology paper is the presentation of facts, whether newly established (as in reports of experiments) or well established (as in literature reviews).

  • 5. The distinction between scientific writing, on the one hand, and advertising or propaganda, on the other hand, is that the purpose of scientific writing is to inform, whereas the purpose of advertising or propaganda is to persuade.

  • 6. A good way to gain acceptance of your ideas is by refuting someone else's ideas.

  • 7. Negative results that fail to support the researcher's hypothesis are every bit as valuable as positive results that do support the researcher's hypothesis.

  • 8. The logical development of ideas in a psychology paper reflects the historical development of ideas in the psychologist's head.

    • Misconception 1. Writing the psychology paper is the most routine, least creative aspect of the scientific enterprise, requiring much time but little imagination.

    Many students lose interest in their research projects as soon as the time comes to write about them. Their interest is in planning for and making new discoveries, not in communicating their discoveries to others. A widely believed fallacy underlies their attitudes. The fallacy is that the discovery process ends when the communication process begins. Although the major purpose of writing a paper is to communicate your thoughts to others, another important purpose is to help you form and organize your thoughts (Pinker, 2014).

    Reporting your findings in writing requires you to commit yourself to those findings and to your interpretation of them, and it opens you to criticism (as well as praise) from others. It is perhaps for this reason as much as any other that many students are reluctant to report their research.

  • Epilogue

  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 290-290

  • Summary

    Many factors will affect your success as a student. Some of them are out of your control. You generally can't control, for example, the illnesses you will have, the family problems you will have, or whether you will take a course from a professor who just doesn't see things your way.

    Over the course of a college career, many things unexpectedly go wrong. One may become ill; family members may become ill; family members may unexpectedly die; one may end up in financial difficulties; one may spend too much time on extracurricular activities; one may end up with a substance-abuse problem. The list is endless. It is hard to get through college without some major things going wrong. In the end, the people who succeed are not just bright; they have grit, or resilience in dealing with setbacks. They can get through the tough times without just giving up. They plow ahead, looking forward to better days, and those days come, sooner or later. So our best advice to you is to remember that the course of a college career is almost never completely smooth. Things go wrong, often in quick succession. The students who succeed are the ones who forge ahead – who continue to perform while looking ahead to a better future. As you wend your way through your college career and your life, keep in mind that, no matter what happens, there is always the possibility of a better future. Put your mind to making that better future, and you will make the most of your college career and later life.

  • 11 - Guidelines for Data Presentation

  • from Part II - Presenting Your Ideas in Writing
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 229-254

  • Summary

    The goal of this chapter is to help you understand how optimally to present data. The chapter draws heavily on three sources to which we refer readers for more details. For the presentation of data in the form of tables, Andrew Ehrenberg's A Primer in Data Reduction (2007) contains much good sound advice. For the use of figures, William Cleveland's The Elements of Graphing Data (1994) is a style guide that is required reading for anyone considering using a graph, from the most junior undergraduate to the most experienced researcher. Good advice is also available in the works of Tufte (2001) as well as in the Sixth Edition of the APA Manual (American Psychological Association, 2009).

    Tables and figures allow large amounts of material to be presented concisely. Well presented, they often enable readers to understand at a glance patterns of data and exceptions that would be obscured if presented in the text. Tables and figures are more expensive for journals to produce than text, however, so if you plan to submit a paper for publication, you should present in this form only your most important sets of data. Do not duplicate data from one table or figure to another unless it is essential for comprehension. Extensive sets of data should be reported in appendices rather than in the body of the paper, or should be made available online with an appropriate note in the paper indicating the Web address at which the data can be obtained.

    The same principles that apply to the effective presentation of tables and figures also apply to effective scientific writing. The basic rule is to aim for a simple, direct presentation, without clutter.

    Stylistic excesses like the moiré pattern graphics that appear on many histograms hinder rather than help, because they often direct attention away from the data. Edward Tufte (2001) uses the term chartjunk to refer to such unnecessary elements of graphs and has good advice on how to avoid it.

    Care in preparing tables and figures helps you to understand your data. As you produce better versions, you explore your data and tease out meanings as well as choose how best to communicate the data. For this reason, tables and figures should be constructed first.

  • 4 - Literature Research

  • from Part I - Planning and Formulating Papers
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 50-65

  • Summary

    Whether you are writing a literature review or working on an experimental research paper, literature research is an important factor. Nowadays, you can get the information you need in several ways. First, you can consult journals and books that you can find in libraries and archives. Second, you can conveniently use the Internet from your own home or workplace to retrieve an enormous amount of information.

    In this chapter, we first describe different kinds of reference materials. We also provide a list of reference materials that may be useful for your research. We then give you an introduction to literature research and some of the databases that you will likely use. Afterward, a section on Internet research gives you an overview of search engines, how best to search for keywords, types of information available on the Internet, and how to evaluate the information you find online. Last, we elaborate on the function of bibliographical software and its use for your research.

    REFERENCE MATERIALS

    Authors of psychology papers should be aware of the references available to them. There are many different kinds of resources you can consult. Here are some of them:

    ■ Almanacs

    Almanacs are annual publications that contain information and statistics on a wide array of topics. The World Factbook is an almanac, for example. There are almanacs for many specialized fields – for example, for special education. The entries are sorted according to general headings, so you may have to think about superordinate topics that belong to your interest to find the information you need.

    ■ Bibliographies

    Bibliographies list the works of a certain writer or focus on certain topics. If you are interested in a particular topic, like the concept of time in psychology, for example, a bibliography can help you find literature on this topic.

    ■ Dictionaries

    Dictionaries show the correct spellings of words and may list synonyms or alternative words to look up. Similar to encyclopedias, they often also contain short entries that explain the word. There are general dictionaries and dictionaries that specialize in one subject area – for example, psychology. There are also specialized dictionaries, such as of synonyms and antonyms.

  • 10 - American Psychological Association Guidelines for Psychology Papers

  • from Part II - Presenting Your Ideas in Writing
  • Robert J. Sternberg, Cornell University, New York, Karin Sternberg, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    The Psychologist's Companion for Undergraduates
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    11 January 2017, pp 200-228

  • Summary

    This chapter summarizes the guidelines for preparing a psychology paper presented in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Sixth Edition, 2009). You should consult this manual for a complete list of guidelines. If you intend to submit a paper for publication, then you cannot afford to be without this manual. It can be obtained from any bookstore or online book retailer, or directly from the American Psychological Association at www.apastyle.org.

    Journals of the British Psychological Society (BPS) adopted the APA style as of October 2001. Publications other than journal articles of the BPS follow the Style Guide that can be found online by entering the search words “BPS style” in a search engine. Many other non-APA journals will accept papers prepared in accordance with APA guidelines as well, even though there are minor differences in style. You should always consult the guidelines of the journal to which you plan to submit to make sure you are adhering to its style regulations.

    All examples used to illustrate principles in this chapter are fictitious. Note that the formatting of this book, as printed, does not always follow the conventions described in this chapter. The conventions in the chapter are for preparing manuscripts, not for printed versions of books and articles.

    FORMATTING THE PAPER

    ■ Margins

    Set your margins to leave 1 inch at the top, bottom, and both sides of each page. Each line should be no longer than 6 1/2 inches. Use flush-left style. In other words, the right margin should be “ragged.” Do not use your word processor's automatic hyphenation option, and do not hyphenate words at the ends of lines yourself.

    ■ Vertical spacing

    Double space between all lines, without exception. There may be times when you are tempted to single space – in writing references, footnotes, block quotations, and the like. Do not succumb to the temptation. Unless you are explicitly instructed otherwise, your paper should be double spaced throughout with the exception of tables and figures.

Page 48 of 84