Course Description:

 

Research Methods in Psychology is a required course for all psychology majors, regardless of their area of concentration. 

 

The pre-requisites for this course are Introduction to Psychology (PSY101) and Statistics (PSY306). 

 

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to psychological research.  This is an essential course for students looking to apply to graduate school as well as enter the workforce following graduation.  This course is designed to take students through the process of conceptualizing, designing, interpreting, and applying research in psychology.  To understand psychology as a science ALL students need to understand how research (yes, even clinical psychology students need to understand research) is done. 

 

This course involves regular classroom involvement, where we unravel the research process… step by step.  And there is also a laboratory component where we practice collecting, entering, analyzing, and reporting data.  The key is we all learn together. 

 

The final project in PSY 450 is a research proposal that incorporates all the aspects learned during the term, and a classroom presentation of that proposal. 

 

Topics include:

 

· Major types of design in psychological research.

· Methods of collecting data, such as:

            Laboratory studies

            Field studies

            Survey methods

            Paper & Pencil tests      

· Research ethics

· Simple and multiple variable studies

· Major statistical methods (ANOVA, t-test, correlations, regressions)

· An introduction to SPSS to analyze data

 

 

 

 

 

 

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PSY 450W: Research Methods in Psychology

Dwight Hennessy, Ph.D.

Buffalo State College