Psychological research methods (2017/2018)

Learning outcomes

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This course introduces a range of psychological research techniques and illustrates their strengths and weaknesses through the discussion of psychological researches in the fundamental areas, with in-depth examples in organizational psychology. Students will develop a basic understanding or the research designs in psychology, and fundamental data analysis skills. Learning outcomes Knowledge and understanding: This course introduces a range of psychological research techniques and illustrates their strengths and weaknesses through the discussion of psychological researches in the fundamental areas, with in-depth examples in organizational psychology. Students are instructed in the basic principles of research design and inferential decision making. Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will be able to understand fundamental concepts in measurement theory; develop a basic understanding of experimental research designs in psychology; develop fundamental data analysis skills especially with regard to the exploration and description and interpretation of data collected from correlational, experimental and quasi-experimental research designs; develop a basic understanding of the principles regarding the identification of causal relations between independent and dependent variables. Emphasis will be placed on the developing skills in the use of computer resources, to manage the research process from the identification of a research question to the data collection and data analysis.
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MM: Esercitazioni
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Practical training sessions will be provided, in order to help students to develop computer skills in order to manage a simple research process in psychology. These practical training sessions will follow the steps: - bibliographical research - data gathering and data entry - data analysis (descriptive and inferential statistics), base level. Open-source and/or very common packages will be used. Download the statistical package JASP https://jasp-stats.org/

Syllabus

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- The Science of Psychology: qualitative and quantitative methods. - The Scientific Method - Ethical Issues in the Conduct of Psychological Research - Descriptive Methods (Observation; Survey Research) - Experimental Methods (Independent Groups Designs, Repeated Measures Designs, Complex Designs) - Quasi-Experimental Designs - Validity in psychological research
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- Library Research Methods in Psychology. - Managing a scientific paper. - Data collection and Computer-Assisted Data Entry. How to manage a dataset. - Computer-Assisted Data Analysis, descriptive statistics. Illustrate and summarize the data. - Computer-Assisted Data Analysis, inferential statistics. Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST); Comparing Two Means; univariate ANOVA, Correlational analysis, Regression analysis.

Assessment methods and criteria

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The same examination will be applied to students who attend or not attend the lessons. All students will be required to complete a two-part written exam. Both parts should be completed in one and a half hour. Both parts will be available together, so that students can decide how to use the entire available time. It will be a closed-book examination. Contents: 1. Part 1: Basic knowledge. This part comprise a multiple-choice test, with 32 questions, 4-5 closed ended questions, only one of which is correct, designed to assess the student's understanding of theoretical contents in Psychological Research Methods. Items found on this exam all the topics described in the program. To address these part it will be useful to study the two handbook suggested (or other similar handbooks). Concerning the topics described in the handbook “Metodologia della ricerca in psicologia", by John J. Shaughnessy, Eugene B. Zechmeister, Jeanne S. Zechmeister, McGraw-Hill, a good training could be offered by the handbook website (http://www.ateneonline.it/shaughnessy/), both through the multiple-choice tests in the Students Area (Area Studenti) (available for everybody), and through the "Connect" platform, with access code in the handbook. 2. Part 2: Applied knowledge. This part comprise three questions, which could be open-ended (very short answers required) or multiple choice ones, designed to assess student’s competence concerning some technical and methodological issues of the discipline. The starting point will be a scientific communication in the field of psychology (generally a short report, in English language, describing a psychological research). The questions will concern method, data analysis, communication of results. Chapters 12) Analisi dei dati and 13) La comunicazione in psicologia of the handbook "Metodologia della ricerca in psicologia", by John J. Shaughnessy, Eugene B. Zechmeister, Jeanne S. Zechmeister, McGraw-Hill (2012 or 2016) will be helpful to address the questions. Only a basic understanding of English language is needed, because all the relevant information will be translated in Italian. It will be rather required to be able to read numeric tables, figures and graphs. Exam evaluation: Maximum evaluation for each part will be 32 over 30, and each part will be evaluated separately. For Part 1, scoring will be: correct answer=1; missing answer=0, wrong answer=-0.2. Total score will be the sum of each single item scoring. For Part 2, scoring will be max 10 for each question, with 2 additional points, for an excellent overall performance. Final scoring depends on the two evaluations, with different weights: 4 for Part 1 and 1 for Part 2. Final grade will be computed as following: Final grade ={[(Part 1 scoring x 4) + (Part 2 scoring x 1)] / (30 x 5)} x 30. Single part’s scoring cannot be used separately: the test is one, and finale grade is one. Scoring in the lab final test (see lab part of the program) will be added to the written examination score (only for evaluations more than 18 over 30), to reach the final grade. Lab test will be proposed only once in the year, at the end of the lab lessons. This part is not mandatory.
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At the end of the practical training session a test could be performed, with an evaluation of max 3 scores, that will be added to the final evaluation. No more than one test will be proposed for the class.

STUDENT MODULE EVALUATION - 2017/2018