Lab Manual for Psychological Research

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. J. Cooper Cutting (PhD, cognitive psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is associate professor of psychology at Illinois State University. Dr. Cutting’s research interests are in psycholinguistics, primarily, with a focus on the production of language. A central theme of his research is how different types of information interact during language use. He has examined this issue in the context of lexical access, within-sentence agreement processes, figurative language production, and pragmatics. He has taught courses in research methods, statistics, cognitive psychology, computer applications in psychology, human memory, psycholinguistics, and sensation and perception. He is also a recipient of the Illinois State University SPA/Psi Chi Jim Johnson Award for commitment to undergraduate mentorship, involvement, and achievement. His non-academic interests include gardening and reading science fiction and fantasy novels.

Part I. Research Methods Exercises
Knowledge Exercise: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?
Science Versus Pseudoscience Exercise
Design a Study Exercise
Naturalistic Observation Group Exercise
Survey Research Exercise
Science in the News
How to Read Empirical Journal Articles
Reading Journal Articles Exercise—Assefi and Garry (2003)
Reading Journal Articles Exercise—Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014)
Reading Journal Articles Exercise—Lee et al. (2014)
Reading Journal Articles Exercise—Roediger and Karpicke (2006)
Lab Assignment: Library Exercise
Learning Check—Basics of Psychological Research
Research Design Exercise
Design and Data Collection Exercise
Identifying and Developing Hypotheses About Variables
Experiments Exercise
Independent and Dependent Variables Exercise
Identifying Variables From Abstracts
Identifying Variables From Empirical Articles
Internal and External Validity Exercise
Learning Check—Experimental Designs
Ethics Exercise
Ethics Exercise Paper
Sample Consent Form
Learning Check—Ethics
Subject Sampling Exercise
Descriptive Statistics Exercise
Graphing Exercise
Correlations and Scatterplots Exercise
Inferential Statistics Exercise
Inferential Statistics and Analysis Exercise
Hypothesis Generation Exercise
Statistics With Excel Exercise
Learning Check—Statistics
Bias and Control Exercise
Factorial Design Exercise
Factorial Design Exercise—Sproesser, Schupp, and Renner (2014)
Factorial Design Exercise—Farmer, McKay, and Tsakiris (2014)
Describing Main Effects and Interactions Exercise
Specialized Designs Exercise: Developmental
Learning Check—Bias and Control and Specialized Designs
Part II. Research Project Exercises
Getting Your Research Ideas for the Group Project
Picking Your Research Idea for the Group Project
Brief Literature Review for Group Project Development
Variables in Your Group Projects
Mock Institutional Review Board Form
Pilot of Research Project
Statistical Analyses for Your Group Project
Group Project Literature Review
Group Project Methods Section
Group Project Results Section
Group Project Discussion Section
Group Project Abstract
Poster Presentation Checklist
Oral Presentation Checklist
Group Project Progress Report
Part III. APA Style Exercises
Sample APA Paper
Creating References
APA Style Quiz
APA Style Exercise
Sample Manuscript Text
APA Exercise: Organizing and Formatting a Complete Report—Part A
APA Exercise: Organizing and Formatting a Complete Report—Part B
APA Exercise: Organizing and Formatting a Complete Report—Part C
APA Exercise: Organizing and Formatting a Complete Report—Part D
APA Style Manuscript Checklist
APA Style 6th Edition Update—A Summary of the Changes
Part IV. Avoiding Plagiarism Exercises
Academic Honesty Guidelines—What Is (and Isn’t) Plagiarism
Examples of Plagiarism
Identifying and Avoiding Plagiarism