Activities for Teaching Statistics and Research Methods: A Guide for Psychology Instructors

✍ Scribed by Jeffrey R. Stowell (editor), William E. Addison (editor)

• Publisher: American Psychological Association
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 146
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book offers original, pedagogically sound, classroom-tested activities for teaching statistics and research methods that engage students, teach principles, and inspire teachers.

A sound understanding of statistics and research methods is essential for all psychologists, and these topics are core components of both Advanced Placement and undergraduate psychology curricula.  Yet, these courses are often challenging for many students, some of whom may burn out and even give up on psychology altogether.

Each chapter in this book contains classroom exercises in a particular topic area that are practical and easily implemented, and help students learn core principles in ways that are fun and engaging.  Whether illustrating basic concepts like variance and standard deviation, correlation, p-values and effect sizes, or teaching strategies for identifying confounding factors, recognizing bias, constructing surveys, and understanding the ethics of behavioral research, each chapter offers clear and compelling tools for engaging students on conceptual and practical levels.  The book also includes a handy table that organizes activities by topic area, class level, and length of time to complete, so instructors can quickly pinpoint the content they need.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I Statistics
1 Reducing Anxiety in the Statistics Classroom
2 How to Lie With the Y-Axis
3 Summarizing Data Using Measures of Central Tendency: A Group Activity
4 How Fast Is Your Internet? An Activity for Teaching Variance and Standard Deviation
5 Getting Dicey: Thinking About Normal Distributions and Descriptive Statistics
6 A Low-Anxiety Introduction to the Standard Normal Distribution and Measures of Relative Standing
7 Using the Heat Hypothesis to Explore the Statistical Methods of Correlation and Regression
8 Active Learning for Understanding Sampling Distributions
9 Testing Students for ESP: Demonstrating the Role of Probability in Hypothesis Testing
10 Using a TV Game Show Format to Demonstrate Confidence Intervals
11 Real-Life Application of Type I and Type II Decision Errors
12 Factors That Influence Statistical Power
13 An Interdisciplinary Activity for p Values, Effect Sizes, and the Law of Small Numbers
II Research Methods
14 An Activity for Teaching the Scientific Method
15 Linking Identification of Independent and Dependent Variables to the Goals of Science
16 Everything Is Awesome: Building Operational Definitions With Play-Doh and LEGOs
17 A Demonstration of Random Assignment That Is Guaranteed to Work (95% of the Time)
18 Identifying Confounding Factors in Psychology Research
19 Demonstrating Experimenter and Participant Bias
20 The Most Unethical Researcher: An Activity for Demonstrating Research Ethics in Psychology
21 The Ethics of Behavioral Research Using Animals: A Classroom Exercise
22 Demonstrating Interobserver Reliability in Naturalistic Settings
23 Using a Classic Model of Stress to Teach Survey Construction and Analysis
24 Using Childhood Memories to Demonstrate Principles of Qualitative Research
25 Using a Peer-Writing Workshop to Help Students Learn American Psychological Association Style
Index
About the Editors