Experimental Psychology

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Experimental Psychology (4 units)

Prerequisite subjects: Psy11, Stat35

Course Description & Objective.

This course is designed to introduce students to philosophy of science and inquiry with an emphasis on experimental methodology. This will be accomplished by combining traditional lectures with application of principles through laboratory experimentation and demonstration.

The main course objectives include:

Learning to review the primary literature (improving library research skills, increase familiarity with scientific writing and reading scientific journals)
Getting a research idea (specification of a testable research idea, develop hypotheses on several topics in psychology)
Development and execution of a research plan (choosing the appropriate research method to test specific hypotheses, ethical guidelines, how to collect data)
Basic analysis of research results.
Presentation of the results (includes both a verbal and written presentation).

Tentative Lecture Schedule

Week		Assignment
1	Overview/ Introduction	Chapter 1
2	The Problem	Chapter 2
3	Doing Research in the Library/ Internet
4	The Hypothesis	Chapter 3
5	Experimental Variables	Chapter 4
6
7	The Research Plan	Chapter 5, Chapter 12,Appendix B
8	Workshop: APA Format
9	Two Independent Groups	Chapter 6
10
11	More than Two Independent Groups	Chapter 7
12		Due First Paper (2 independent grps)
13	Factorial Design	Chapter 8
14		Due Second Paper (>2 ind.grps)
15	Correlation and Quasi-Experimental Design	Chapter 9
16		Due Third Paper (Factorial Design)
17
18	Presentation of Papers

*Note: This is intended to benefit you as guide for your study. Please understand that the schedule is flexible and subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.

Requirements

Students will be graded based on their performance on the following requirements:

Quizzes	10%
Long Exams	10%
Exercises	10%
Midterm Exam	20%
Experimental Research	25%
Experimental Paper Presentation	15%
Panel Participation	10%
Final Grade	100%