Handbook for Teaching Statistics and Research Methods

✍ Scribed by Mark E. Ware, Charles L. Brewer

• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 296
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume presents a collection of articles selected from Teaching of Psychology, sponsored by APA Division 2. It contains the collective experience of teachers who have successfully dealt with students' statistics anxiety, resistance to conducting literature reviews, and related problems. For those who teach statistics or research methods courses to undergraduate or graduate students in psychology, education, and the social sciences, this book provides many innovative strategies for teaching a variety of methodological concepts and procedures in statistics and research methods courses.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Section I: Statistics
1. Generating Data Sets
Making data analysis realistic: Incorporating
research into statistics courses
Crafting questionnaire-style data: An SAS implementation
A BASIC program for generating integer means and variances
A simple procedure for generating nonnormal data sets: A FORTRAN program
Publication bias: A computer-assisted demonstration of excluding nonsignificant results from
research interpretations
2. Illustrating Statistical Concepts
Teaching students about graphs
Elaborating selected statistical concepts with common experience
A "bag of tricks" for teaching about sampling distributions
Demonstrating the influence of sample size and reliability on study outcome
3. Examining Statistical Tests
An intuitive approach to teaching analysis of variance
ANOVA MultiMedia: A program for teaching ANOVA designs
One-way between subjects design: Simulated data and analysis using SAS
ANOVAGEN: A data generation and analysis of variance program for use in statistics courses
Using summary statistics as data in ANOVA: A SYSTAT macro
A computer program that demonstrates the difference between main effects and interactions
On testing for variance effects
Demonstrating the consequences of violations of assumptions in between-subjects analysis
of variance
Understanding correlations: Two
computer exercises
Pearson's r and spread: A classroom demonstration
4. Developing Students' Skills
Computer-assisted statistical analysis: A teaching innovation?
Developing selection skills in introductory statistics
A microcomputer-based statistics course with individualized assignments
Classroom use of the personal computer to teach statistics
Standard errors of statistics students
Writing assignments in statistics classes encourage students to learn interpretation
Assessing writing and statistical competence in probability and statistics
How often are our statistics wrong? A statistics class exercise
Teaching statistics with the Internet
Stimulating statistical thinking through situated simulations
5. Evaluating Success in Statistics
Teaching basic statistical concepts through continuous data collection and feedback
Repeat examinations in introductory statistics courses
Formal operations and learning style predict success in statistics and computer science courses
Strategies and resources for teaching statistics to visually impaired students
Section II: Research Methods
1. Reducing Students' Fears
Taking the fear out of research: A gentle approach to teaching an appreciation for research
A "handy" way to introduce research methods
Reducing fear of the laboratory rat: A participant modeling approach
2. Evaluating Ethical Issues
Students' roles, rights, and responsibilities as research participants
Effect of incentives and aversiveness of treatment on willingness to participate in research
The subject-experimenter contract: A reexamination of subject pool contamination
Effects of subject pool policy on student attitudes toward psychology and psychological research
3. Teaching Ethics
Ethics case-study simulation: A generic tool for psychology teachers
Using the Barnum effect to teach about ethics and deception in research
Teaching research ethics through role-play and discussion
The use of role-play in teaching research ethics: A validation study
Undergraduate research and the institutional review board: A mismatch or happy marriage?
Discussing animal rights and animal research in the classroom
4. Reviewing the Literature
Library instruction for psychology majors: Minimum training guidelines
Assessment of PsycLIT competence, attitudes, and instructional methods
Getting the most from PsycLIT: Recommendations for searching
A strategy for improving literature reviews in psychology courses
5. Using Computers
A microcomputer-based lab for psychology instruction
Learning about microcomputers and research
Computer literacy in the psychology curriculum: Teaching a database language for control
of experiments
6. Implementing Teaching Strategies
Defying
intuition: Demonstrating the importance of the empirical technique
Teaching hypothesis testing by debunking a demonstration of telepathy
Basketball game as psychology experiment
Devising relevant and topical undergraduate laboratory projects: The core article approach
Use of the jigsaw technique in laboratory and discussion classes
The problem method of teaching research methods
The research methods script
Using an everyday memory task to introduce the method and results sections of a scientific paper
Interpreting students' interpretations of research
Research methods Jeopardy: A tool for involving students and organizing the study session
7. Demonstrating Systematic Observation and Research Design
An observational emphasis in undergraduate psychology laboratories
Naturalistic observation of behavior: A model system using mice in a colony
Simulating Clever Hans in the classroom
"The eye of the beholder": A classroom demonstration of observer bias
A classroom demonstration of single-subject research designs
Factorial design: Binocular and monocular depth perception in vertical and horizontal stimuli
Return to our roots: Raising radishes to teach experimental design
A computerized Stroop experiment that demonstrates the interaction in a 2 x 3 factorial design
8. Teaching Writing and Critical Thinking
Student research proposals in the experimental psychology course
What goes where? An activity to teach the organization of journal articles
Collaborative writing in a statistics and research methods course
Formatting APA pages in WordPerfect: An update
The human subjects review procedure: An exercise in critical thinking for undergraduate experimental psychology students
Using riddles to introduce the process and experience of scientific thinking
From the laboratory to the headlines: Teaching critical evaluation of press reports of research
Taking a course in research methods improves reasoning about real-life events
A course to develop competence in critical reading of empirical research in psychology
9. Emphasizing Accuracy in Research
Teaching students the importance of accuracy in research
Teaching commitment to accuracy in research: Comment on Cronan-Hillix (1988)
Teaching students the importance of accuracy in research: A reply to McDonald and Peterson
Teaching the importance
of accuracy in preparing references
10.
Fostering Students' Research and Presentations
Undergraduate research groups: Two models
A summer internship in psychological research: Preparation of minority undergraduates
for graduate study
A research practicum: Undergraduates as assistants in psychological research
Collaborative learning in an Introduction to Psychological Science laboratory: Undergraduate
teaching fellows teach to learn
A radical poster session
Poster sessions revisited: A student research convocation
In-class poster sessions
Preferences about APA poster presentations
Appendix
Subject Index