Scientific Thinking About Psychological Issues

The purpose of the second written assignment is to continue your practice at your scientific thinking about psychological issues. We will ask you to read another research description and: (1) think about how the principles of scientific thinking apply to it, as you did for the first assignment, but also (2) critique the research methods used in the research description.

For the first part of the written assignment, you should analyze the claims being made according to 2 of the 6 principles of scientific thinking (see Written Assignment 1 for a list of these). You should use the feedback provided for your Written Assignment 1 to help write this section. It is up to you to select the most relevant principles but in every case, if you think the research description does a good job of following one of the principles, provide a detailed response as to why you think that. If you think the research description does not do a good job of following one of the principles, provide a comprehensive answer and also say what would need to be done to make sure the research description follows the principle.

For the second part of the written assignment, analyze the research description and the claims it makes in relation to 2 different aspects of the research methods discussed in class and/or in Lilienfeld et al. in Chapter 2. In the lecture and textbook, a number of issues related to research methods have been discussed. Below are some examples of things you might look for in the research description. Remember though that not every point will relate to the research description and you may even find other weaknesses in research design that are not listed below: Random selection refers to whether every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen to participate

Reliability refers to the consistency of measurement

Validity refers to the extent to which the measure being used actually measures the thing it is supposed to

Random assignment means that participants are randomly assigned to experimental or control group

Confounding variable refers to any variable that differs between experimental and control group other than the independent variable

Experimenter expectancy effect refers to when researchers unintentionally bias the outcome of the study

Demand characteristics refers to cues that participants might pick on that will allow them to guess what the study is about

Sampling bias refers to whether the sample is representative of the population you are interested in studying.

Apply two aspects of research methods to the research description. When you identify flaws in the research methodology, provide a comprehensive explanation of the flaw and also say what would need to be done to improve the research methodology in the research description.