Methods for Research in Psychological Sciences

Topics

• Understand basic concepts that characterize psychology as a field of scientific inquiry, and appreciate the various subfields that form the discipline as well as things that differentiate it from other related disciplines. Scientific enquiry in Social Sciences and in Psychology in particular is based on the formulation of statistical models. Each scientific hypothesis corresponds to a particular model and hypothesis testing involves comparing models in terms of their predictive power. The field of psychology, because of the complexity of the data it attempts to explain relies heavily (and more so that other biological disciplines) on statistical modeling and other quantitative approaches. Students who desire to pursue a scientific career in psychology need to be well trained in these methods. Develop an understanding of the central questions/issues in contemporary psychology as well as a historical perspective of psychological theories and key empirical data. In this class, students will learn the current approaches in statistical modeling but these will be related to the more traditional statistics that have been used in the field in prior years giving the students a historical perspective. Develop a thorough understanding of one of the major content areas of psychology (i.e., Social/Personality, Developmental, Clinical, Cognitive, Biological). Although, we might be using examples from different areas of psychology, the student will not gain a major understanding of these content areas in this course. Develop skills to critically evaluate the presentation of scientific ideas and research in original scientific papers as well as in the popular media. In this course, the students will learn not only how to formulate competing hypothesis and generate the corresponding statistical models but also how to best interpret the results from these quantitative analyses so that they can be communicated in written form in publication format or in spoken form for presentations. These skills are critical for the evaluation of scientific work and conclusions performed by experts in the field and others. Become familiar with research methods used in psychological research, and become proficient in basic concepts of statistical analyses and familiar with more advanced methods in data analyses and modeling. This is the central learning goal of this class. Learn to develop, articulate, and communicate, both orally and in written form, a testable hypothesis, or an argument drawing from an existing body of literature. The students will not make a formal oral presentation during this class but will be asked during lecture and section to orally explain their results and reasoning. The final written project is designed to teach how to write-up quantitative analyses and statistical reasoning within a longer manuscript analyzing a particular question in the field of psychology. Apply a psychological principle to an everyday problem, or take an everyday problem and identify the relevant psychological mechanisms/issues. This learning goal will not be emphasized in the class but students will learn how to formulate a psychological principle in terms of a particular model. This formulation is key to identify how particular problems observed in the student’s everyday life could be analyzed.

Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes