How to do your own experiments in psychology and education

1. Formulate your Research Problem

Information

Members: 19
Latest Activity: Sep. 19, 2008

Overview

What do you want to do your experiment about? What do you want to understand better?
Don't think about how you'll collect your data yet -- just figure out what you want to study.

To start, think of a question like: Does sleep affect working memory? Do pictures affect reading?

Homework:
- Fill out three copies of the Team Data Sheet
- Hand in your Research Problem Worksheet

What you need to do as soon as possible:

a. Choose a partner to work with all semester long.
b. Choose a psychological process to study -- your "process" (ex: reading, writing, working memory, stereotype formation, etc.)
Identify A PART of that process to focus on -- your "sub-process" (ex: using topic knowledge (during reading, perception, stereotype formation), remembering sequence or position (part of visual working memory), etc.)
c. Choose something to study that affects your sub-process -- your "factors".
d. Describe your research problem in writing. Fill out the Research Problem Worksheet.

How you should do it:

Follow the instructions in sections a, b, and c above. [Follow the links for more information.]
Ask as many questions (using this web site!) as you need to understand everything clearly.

Read this topic next: Choose a partner

Discussion Forum

Further Resources on Formulating Research Problems

Started by Mike Dillinger, PhD Jun. 18, 2008.

Advice from former students about this task

Started by Mike Dillinger, PhD Jun. 18, 2008.

TP1 Glossary: Which terms did you find unclear or difficult?

Started by Mike Dillinger, PhD Jun. 18, 2008.

1c. Choose your factors

Started by Mike Dillinger, PhD Jun. 14, 2008.

1a. Choose a great partner 4 Replies

Started by Mike Dillinger, PhD. Last reply by Mike Dillinger, PhD Aug. 8, 2008.

1b. Choose a psychological process and a sub-process to study 26 Replies

Started by Mike Dillinger, PhD. Last reply by Omar G. Sep. 19, 2008.

What was easy/hard/interesting about this topic? (3 comments)

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3 Comments

Comment by Krystle on September 9, 2008 at 12:05pm: Jose... I THINK I found Task 2 and 3.. they're under the Tasks tab and just look for numbers 2 and 3.. I don't remeber the titles right now. I think one is the Lit Review and other is the Bibliography, but I could be wrong.