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How to Write a Scientific Poster or Paper Guidelines for Statistics Education
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Goals: 1) Experience statistics as it is practiced by researchers in psychology:
2) Develop a systematic model for development of an experimental design:
Materials:
On Line Perfection Game: Perfection is a popular game in which a person is expected to place specifically shaped pegs into the appropriate holes within a short time period. The Perfection Game is an example of a reaction time test. The on-line Perfection Game provides students the opportunity to design many versions of the original game in order to test which variables have the largest effect on reaction time. You can leave all the variables blank when you are simply trying out the game, however, if you want to find your score is the database of results, input any specific course ID and student ID. The following link allows you to play to the Perfection Game. In the following lab you will have the opportunity to design and analyze an experiment to determine which factors are the most influential in successfully playing the Perfection Game. Perfection Lab: Printable Student Version Instructors Notes: Prerequisites: This lab can easily be done as a 2-sample t-test or a paired t-test using one explanatory variable. If students are planning to conduct a multi-variable experiment, they should read and answer questions from the ANOVA: Factorial Designs tutorial before Day 2. More complex, within subjects designs are discussed in ANOVA: Advanced Designs. Paper Review: I have found that some students are initially frustrated or intimidated when they are asked to read a research paper outside of their major. In my experience, providing more time to read the paper has not been helpful. It may, however, be appropriate to:
Class Discussion: I suggest spending at least part of three separate class periods to discuss the Stroop (1935) paper and develop a class project or several group projects. It is helpful to initially identify that your goal as a professor is not to be able to answer all of their questions about current research in cognitive psychology, but to teach them a process in which they can find their own answers. You may want to consider additional discussion topics:
Day 1: Spend at least 20 minutes discussing the paper review questions. Students may not feel qualified to design a psychology study, but they often can suggest appropriate modifications to a given study. Start students thinking about their own primary research questions and ask them:
Day 2: Invite a psychologist to the class (or a statistician if you are a psychologist) to answer student questions that are beyond your scope of knowledge.
Day 3: After students have submitted their experimental ideas, the class can vote on one experiment to conduct as an entire class. This allows you to test more factors and levels with replicates in less time. However, each group of students could just as easily design and analyze their own experiments. It is beneficial to talk about scale-attenuation effects (i.e. floor or ceiling effects) before students finalize their design. If the subjects rarely finish before the timer expires (i.e. the dependant variable is almost always at the highest time level), no differences will be seen between the conditions (even if one truly exists). While students may not consider it as fun as the other options, "no time limit" provides the most straightforward response variable to analyze. One related topic not discussed in the listed research papers is how stress can impact reaction time. The students can calculate the average time per piece and determine if a time limitation of "short", "medium", "long", or "no time limit" impacts there average time per piece. Final Paper Discussion: During the in-class review day, spend some time discussing how the process details (which are rarely discussed in textbooks and are often only given cursory comments in research papers) can significantly impact the analyses and conclusions of the data. My students are typically surprised by:
Grading: I would suggest 50 points for the entire project (this is the same value as an exam in my course).
If your institution does not have an Institutional Review Board, you can find more information on registration as well as educational materials at http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/
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