Overview of PSY206F – Research methods I

1. Overview of PSY206F – Research methods I • planning research - research design • types of research design – experiments, qualitative research • psychological measurement – psychometrics • data analysis - statistics Overview of the course

2. Objectives: • To develop skills that are appropriate for analysing knowledge claims, in the media, in scientific journals, etc. • To become familiar with methodological vocabulary • To understand and apply methodological concepts Overview of the course

3. Part 1: research design (1) • General overview of this part of the course (12 lectures) • Brief review of work covered in PSY101W • Read Chapter 2 in Weiten, Psychology. Themes and variations. • The nature of scientific knowledge • Chapter 1 in Babbie & Mouton (2001) • Research design – formulating the research problem • Chapter 4 in Babbie & Mouton (2001) Overview of the course

4. Research design (2) • Research design – conceptualization and measurement • NOTE: measurement is such a key factor in modern-day psychology that we devote a separate section of the course to it – psychometrics (Part 3 in the general course outline) • Chapter 5 in Babbie & Mouton (2001) Overview of the course

5. Research design (3) • Research design – operationalization of variables • Chapter 6 in Babbie & Mouton (2001) • Research design – sampling • Chapter 7 in Babbie & Mouton (2001) • Types of research design – experiments • Chapter 8 in Babbie & Mouton (2001) Overview of the course

6. Brief review of work covered in PSY101W • Read Chapter 2 in Weiten • The nature of the research process • Variables (dependent, independent, extraneous) • Measurement • Research strategies (descriptive, correlational, experimental) • Experimental and control groups • Naturalistic observation studies Overview of the course