Research Methods for Psychology Students

100B is to weed out the weak.

It's to separate the wheat and the chaff, divide the "them" and the "us". You hear rumors that it's used as a basic yardstick to determine if a student will be "good" at research in post-bacclaureate settings, Apparently.

Let's break down UCLA's Research Methods program real quick here. It's a huge lecture hall with 200 to 300 students, broken up into "Lab" sections of 15 to 25 students each. Each Lab section is taught by a different TA who has a great deal of control over individual grades in his/her Lab. The Lab grade constitutes a majority of the class grade.

Unfortunately the TA's don't even know what the grading rubrics will look like for each assignment until after the due dates. This creates HUGE PROBLEMS! Including points off for things that WERE NOT DISCUSSED IN LAB, nor were suggested at any point in the textbook, workbook, APA manual, or by any explicit convention.

TA's are given the ability to pick and choose which APA standards to follow, thus COMPLETELY INVALIDATING the entire point of the course: TO LEARN COMMONLY ACCEPTED METHODS of RESEARCH. They ought to retitle the course "Arbitrary, Variable Research Methods" - 100BAV...

A student's grade is curved against their Lab, but they aren't allowed to discuss grades with labmates. Fortunately, some professors release class-wide grades so you know where you stand in the sea of other students. UNFORTUNATLEY THIS DOESN'T HELP since each TA uses DIFFERENT GRADING METHODS. Students are left without any idea of where they stand except by listening in to whispers between friends about midterm scores. This is very frustrating.

And grades aren't all that's disallowed to discuss. The powers-that-be in Psych are so concerned about cheating that a student isn't allowed to discuss their research paper WITH THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THEIR GROUP WHO ARE WRITING THE SAME RESEARCH PAPER. It's my understanding that the scientific community is in fact a COMMUNITY, and the entire point of the vetting process is to get OTHER MEMBERS of that community to PROVIDE FEEDBACK on your work. So not only are we NOT learning the APA method, but we're NOT learning how to organize and solicit peer reviews.

The Lab section of Research Methods is NOT teaching its students anything important. All it does is offer a chance to students to feel humiliated, alienated, and alone in a sea of other students. It's about the best way to ensure that students LOSE their idealism towards research.

Burning the chaff is a great way to ensure that your crops don't grow as well next season.

~Micah

'Alo World...