Lab Manual for Conducting Psychological Research
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2025
Pages: 202
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2025
Pages: 120
Choose Your Format
$50.00 USD
Ebook
$25.00 USD
This manual is designed to be used as a supplement for any research methods course in psychology, and with any textbook adopted. It can be considered required material or used by students as a supplementary resource to support studying.
There is an emphasis on teaching students how to approach and understand research, including the types of questions to ask when reading academic articles.
The manual includes resources and exercises covering the complete research process; from designing an experiment, answering questions regarding ethics, obtaining informed consent from participants, collecting data, analyzing data, to writing up the research report in APA style and presenting the findings in either oral or poster form.
There are detailed instructions on how to write each section of an APA-style research paper and on how to cite and reference works in APA style, with accompanying assignments.
Also included are step-by-step instructions on how to conduct various descriptive and inferential statistics in Excel.
Due to the perforated nature of the pages, instructors are free to use the assignments of their choice in the order of their preference, and the exercises and assignments can be completed in either groups, pairs, or individually.
Digital instructor resources are provided with answer keys for the various assignments and quizzes, as well as a marking rubric for the final research paper.
What the Manual Has to Offer Students and Instructors
Unit 1 Ways of Understanding Behaviour
Science Versus Pseudoscience
Ways of Knowing-Intuition and Authority
Using Our Intuition to Understand Human Behaviour
Discussion
Unit 2 An Introduction to Conducting Psychological Research
Research Methods-Truth or Fiction
The World of the American Psychological Association (APA)-Familiarizing Yourself With the APA Website
How to Read a Research Article-Jordan and Zanna (1999)
Unit 3 Ethics in Psychological Research
Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Quiz
Reviewing the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans
Identifying Ethical Issues in Classic Psychology Experiments
Designing a Debriefing Session
Unit 4 Variables and Operational Definitions
Identifying the IV and DV from Article Titles and Abstracts
Operationally Defining Variables
Unit 5 Measurement
Types of Validity
Types of Reliability
Reliability Versus Validity
Types of Measuring Scales Quiz
Identify the Scale of Measurement
Unit 6 Sampling
Sampling Quiz
Defining Probability and Non-Probability Sampling Techniques
Unit 7 Basic Statistics
Descriptive Statistics Quiz
Descriptive Statistics Review
The Effect of Study Tie on Test Performance
Descriptive Statistics
Inferential Statistics
Inferential Statistics Quiz
Inferential Statistics-Hypothesis Testing Using a t-Test
Unit 8 Methods of Conducting Psychological Research
1. Case Studies
Understanding Case Studies-Quiz
Case Study-Phineas Gage
Case Study-H.M. (Henry Molaison)
2. Qualitative versus Quantitative Methods
Qualitative Versus Quantitative Research
Quantitative Methods-Territoriality in a Parking Lot (Ruback & Juieng, 1997)
Quantitative Research Using Systematic Observation Replication of Ruback and Juieng (1997)
Parking Lot Data Collection Sheet
Qualitative Research Assignment Observing Participant Behaviour in Parking Lots
3. Questionnaires and Surveys
Questionnaires and Surveys—Quiz
Creating a Questionnaire
4. Correlational Method
Correlation QuiZ
Hypothesis Testing With Correlation Coefficients
5. Experimental Research
Threats to Internal Validity—Finding Confounds
Threats to Internal Versus External Validity
Between-Subject versus Within-Subject (Repeated Measure) Designs (Swinkles & Giuliano, 2018)
Comparing Experimental and Correlational Designs
6. Quasi-Experimental Designs
Identify the Quasi-Experimental Design
Example of a Quasi-Experimental Design (Winograd et al., 1999)
7. Factorial Designs
Factorial Designs Quiz
Interpreting Factorial Designs Tables and Graph
Unit 9 Identifying Key Components in Research Articles
Overview of a Research Article
Godden and Baddeley (1975)
Harris, Bargh, and Brownell (2009)
Hutchens (2005)
Unit 10 APA Style
Finding Errors in Reference Entries
Creating Citations and References in APA Style
Unit 11 Putting It All Together
Designing an Experiment—Preparation Proposal Sheet
Designing and Conducting a Levels of Processing Experiment (Replication)
Preparation—Reviewing Previous Research (Craik & Tulving, 1975)
Designing and Conducting a Levels of Processing Experiment (Replication)
Ethics Checklist for the Final Research Project
Obtaining Informed Consent
Data Collection—Summarizing the Procedure to be Used in Data Collection
Data Analysis and Reporting the Results
Writing the Report in APA Style
Creating a Title Page in APA Style
Writing an Abstract in APA Style
Writing an Introduction in APA Style
Writing a Method Section in APA Style
Writing a Results Section in APA Style
Writing a Discussion Section in APA Style
Creating a Reference Section in APA Style
Creating a Table in APA Style
Creating a Figure in APA Style
Creating an Appendix in APA Style
Presenting Your Project—Creating a Poster in APA Style
Presenting Your Project—Preparing an Oral Presentation
Judy Caldwell (Ph.D.) is an instructor of psychology at Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She obtained her BA (Honours) in Psychology from Simon Fraser University in 1992 and her Masters and Ph.D. in Cognitive Science (with a focus on basic memory processes) from the University of Victoria in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Upon graduating from UVic, she began teaching first- and second-year psychology courses at Camosun. The first course Judy taught was Research Methods in Psychology, and she continues to teach the course to this day. Over the past 25 years, Judy has been continuously recreating and refining her instructional content to optimize student engagement and learning outcomes. Her passion lies in providing students with a sense of excitement about conducting psychological research and encouraging them to think critically about the world around them.