Unit 2 - Ideas for Research

Where do research ideas come from?

1. Your experience

2. Casual observation of others and the world

3. Practical problems- like homelessness

4. Many from OTHER RESEARCH!

   1. Psychological theories

   2. Other researchers (reading works, conversations)

   3. Counter-intutitive findings (believing the opposite is true)

Where do ideas come from?

• The spectrum of trustworthiness

• Academic Literature Review

• Old School search strategy

The spectrum of trustworthiness

____________________ - The idea that some research sources are more trustworthy than others

From LEAST TO MOST trustworthy:

• Sensational

• Popular

• Substantive News/general interest

• Scholarly

Sensational sources

• References to sources are usually obscure

• Often in newspaper format

• Written by variety of authors

• Elementary, inflammatory language geared to gullible audience

• Support from pseudoscientific sources

• Commercially published to play to popular trends

• Flashy, astonishing headlines

Examples: National Enquirer, Globe, Star, Weekly World News

Popular sources

• Often have a slick, attractive appearance with many photographs

• Sources are rarely, if ever, cited

• Written by a wide range of authors who may or may not have expertise in an area

• Written in simple language with short articles geared to audience with minimal education

• Research may be mentioned, but it may come from an obscure source

• Published commercially with the intent to entertain the reader, sell products, or promote a viewpoint

Examples: Parents, Women’s/Men’s Health Reader’s Digest

Substantive news/general interest sources

• Attractive appearance, usually with photographs

• Sources are sometimes cited

• Articles written by members of editorial staff, scholar, or free-lance writer

• Language geared to educated audience, but no specialty assumed

• Do not report original research, report on research in format geared to a general audience

• Published by commercial publishers or individuals, but some from professional organizations

Examples: National Geographic, Scientific American, New York Times, The Atlantic

Scholarly sources

• Sober, serious look with graphs and tables

• Reference citations always provided

• Written by a scholar in the field or someone who has done research in the field

• Language of the discipline, assuming a scholarly background of the reader

• Report original research

• Many, but not all, published by professional organizations

Examples: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Child Development, Journal of Experimental Psychology

Academic Literature Review

Source for research ideas and to support the research ideas we have developed. Even within the academic literature, there are varying degrees of trustworthiness

• Peer-reviewed journals, some of the best have rejection rates of 90%

  • Clinical Psychology Review, Journal of Pediatric Psychology

• Others have less rejection

  • Psychological Reports, Bulletin of Psychonomic society, Journal of Social Psychology

Predatory journals

_________________ publish literally anything and lots of people in academia are filled with these requests to submit things/publish in these journals

• Bottom feeders of the academic world

• Reputable journals don’t ask authors to submit to them– its meant to be the other way around

  • People have submitted gibberish articles that make no sense or things that are clearly wrong

    • Get me off your f*ing mail list,

Secondary sources

__________________ - Some sources are summarizing sources, or textbooks (like intro to psych textbook into a concise summary)… can be very good

• These sources don’t generate any of their own resource, but summarizes research done by others

Issues with secondary sources

__________________________ can sometimes misconstrue what primary sources say.

Example: Little Albert… -- he was classically conditioned to fear white rabbits and white rats

• Some introductory textbooks get details wrong– some say that Little Alberts fear went away, but it didn’t go away his mother just pulled him from the experiment.

Old School Search Strategy

__________________ - Back in the day… looking in libraries

• A good way to look for sources is to look for other sources cited in it

• Google Scholar is a good source that generates a large collection of articles from academic literature

  • A best strategy is to look at who has cited the articles published, and look at the others who cited that article because it can be useful