Stephen -
I require that my students design, in teams of 3 or 4, an original 2 x 2
experiment in which they predict a significant interaction between the two
variables. To get them started, I provide them with several topics to
choose from, each of which is associated with a "seed" or starter article.
I mostly use different articles each year, and I look for good quality,
fairly recent (to increase their chances of doing something that hasn't
already been done) articles that describe experiments using either 2 x 2s
or sometimes 2 x 2 x 2s. I find that social, personality, and cognitive
studies work well (though perhaps I'm biased because I'm a social
psychologist :-); JPSP and PSPB are a little too difficult, so I've tended
to skim through recent issues of JASP (Journal of Applied Social
Psychology) and BASP (Basic and Applied Social Psychology) to pick my seed
articles. Because these journals are applied, the topics are usually
interesting to students.
Their assignment is to read and critique the article (coming up with
potential ideas for future studies), and then to search the literature
(using references from that article as well as from PsychInfo) in order to
help generate possible ideas. I usually meet with the students several
times (once in lab, once or twice outside of lab) as they formulate their
ideas. Throughout the 2nd half of the semester, they design the study,
collect the data, analyze it using SPSS, write up individual APA-style
reports on it, and present a group poster at a semester-end poster session.
Although there are easier ways to do these kinds of projects in research
methods (e.g., having all students work on a single project, perhaps out of
your own research area; having students replicate a study that's already
been done; having students propose but not actually conduct a study), I've
had great success with this method. Each semester, about half of the groups
get significant interactions, and these groups usually go on to present
their work at an undergraduate, and then a regional (SWPA), conference.
Recently, several (with additional work the following semester or summer)
have also resulted in publishable papers (with one of the students as
first-author and me as second author) in outlets such as JASP and BASP.
Good Luck!
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Traci A. Giuliano
Department of Psychology
Southwestern University
Georgetown, TX 78627
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(512) 863-1596;fax 863-5788
http://www.southwestern.edu/~giuliant
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