The Process of Research in Psychology

Dawn M. McBride is professor of psychology at Illinois State University, where she has taught research methods since 1998. Her research interests include automatic forms of memory, false memory, prospective memory, task order choices, and forgetting. In addition to research methods, she teaches courses in introductory psychology, cognition and learning, and human memory; she also teaches a graduate course in experimental design. She is a recipient of the Illinois State University Teaching Initiative Award and the Illinois State University SPA/Psi Chi Jim Johnson Award for commitment to undergraduate mentorship, involvement, and achievement. Her nonacademic interests include spending time with her family, traveling, watching Philadelphia sports teams (it was a good year for Philly sports this year!), and reading British murder mysteries. She earned her PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of California, Irvine, and her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

PART I. OVERVIEW OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS FROM START TO FINISH
1. Psychological Research: The Whys and Hows of the Scientific Method
2. Hypothesis Development: Where Research Questions Come From
3. How Psychologists Use the Scientific Method: Data Collection Techniques and Research Designs
4. Measurement Issues in Research
5. Ethical Guidelines for Psychological Research
6. Sampling
7. Summarizing and Interpreting Data: Using Statistics
8. Reporting Research
PART II. THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF RESEARCH METHODS AND ANALYSIS
9. The Nuts and Bolts of Survey Research
10. The Nuts and Bolts of Correlational Studies
11. The Nuts and Bolts of Experiments
12. The Nuts and Bolts of Quasi-Experiments
13. The Nuts and Bolts of Other Specialized Designs
14. The Nuts and Bolts of Using Statistics