East Carolina University
Department of Psychology

Research Design Lessons

    Here is a collection of documents I use in my PSYC 2210 class, Experimental Psychology. I teach it more as a course in research methods and design rather than just experimental psychology.

• An Introduction to Experimental Psychology -- An overview.
• Sampling -- Selecting research units on which to gather data.
• Measurement -- Scales of measurement, reliability, validity.
• Scaling -- Thurstone, Likert, and Guttman.
• An Introduction to Research Design -- Experimental and nonexperimental designs, threats to internal and external validity, control of extraneous variables.
• Randomized Experimental Design -- Random selection, random assignment, noise reduction.
• Quasi-Experimental Design -- The treatment groups are not equated prior to manipulation of the independent variable.
• MetaDesign -- Create and defend your own design.
• Statistical Conclusion Validity -- An introduction to parametric inferential statistics.
• Design and Analysis -- A quick review of the basics for commonly used tests of statistical significance.
• Writing an APA-Style Research Report -- The basics for writing a research report in APA-style.
• Conducting a Literature Search -- Using online resources at ECU.
• Writing Assignments -- The assignments used to help my students learn how to write research reports.
• Choice of NHST: Categorical versus Continuous Variables
• Triangulation -- look at your research problem from multiple perspectives