Michael W. Passer - Research Methods : Concepts and Connections

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CONCEPTS AND CONNECTIONS

• THIRD EDITION

• Michael W. Passer
• University of Washington

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ISBN-13: 978-1-319-38289-6 (ePub)

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To my wife Bev, for her endless love, support, and grace,

and to Harold Sigall, Harold Kelley, and Tara Scanlan, my mentors and friends, who nourished my interest in psychology and engaged me in the exciting enterprise of conducting psychological research.

MICHAEL W. PASSER is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Washington, Seattle. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he entered the University of Rochester fully expecting to be a physics or chemistry major, but he became hooked on psychological science after taking introductory psychology and a seminar course on the nature of the mind. He got his start as an undergraduate researcher under the mentorship of Dr. Harold Sigall, was a volunteer undergraduate introductory psychology teaching assistant, and received a Danforth Foundation Fellowship that partly funded his graduate studies and exposed him to highly enriching national conferences on college teaching.

Dr. Passer received his PhD in Psychology from UCLA, where he conducted laboratory research on attribution theory under the primary mentorship of Dr. Harold Kelley and gained several years of field research experience studying competitive stress, self-esteem, and attributional processes among boys and girls playing youth sports, mainly working with Dr. Tara Scanlan in the Department of Kinesiology. At the University of Washington (UW), he has conducted hypothesis-testing field research on competitive stress with youth sport participants, collaborated on several applied research projects in the field of industrial-organizational psychology, and for the past 30 years has been the faculty coordinator of UWs introductory psychology courses. In this role, he annually teaches courses in introductory psychology and research methods, developed and teaches a graduate course on the teaching of psychology, and is a UW Distinguished Teaching Award nominee. With his colleague Ronald Smith, he coauthored five editions of the introductory textbook Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior (McGraw-Hill), and has published more than 20 scientific articles and chapters, mostly on attribution theory and competitive stress.

Welcome to the research methods course and to the third edition of this textbook. I wrote this book for the same core reasons that I choose to teach the research methods course. First, I believe that regardless of a students major or intended career, a research methods course in psychology or other behavioral science is among the most important classes an undergraduate can take. The course content is tailor-made to sharpen students critical thinking skills and help students become savvier lifelong information consumers. The concepts they learn in this course should foster their ability and motivation to evaluate the soundness of conclusions and other claims they encounter, whether in scientific articles, textbooks, media reports, pseudoscientific writings, or advertisements.

The methods course can deepen students appreciation of the scientific method and scientific values by enhancing their understanding of methodological concepts, different types of research and research design, and ethical and other challenges confronting behavioral scientists. While this methodological foundation has obvious benefits for students who take more advanced science courses or intend to become researchers, it also prepares all students to be knowledgeable citizens and professionals in an increasingly science-oriented world. Even if few of our students plan to pursue an academic research career, many hope to become practitioners in clinical or counseling psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, school psychology, social work, medicine or nursing, physical therapy, law, or business. As professionals, they will need to draw upon knowledge of research methods as they stay current with the literature in their chosen field and evaluate its implications for the way they conduct their work.

My second reason for writing this book is that, to put it mildly, teaching the methods course is a formidable challenge. Years ago, when the opportunity to teach it first arose, I was thrilled and eagerly prepared. A few days before the start of classes I ran into a colleague who asked, What are you teaching? Research methods, I replied. Oh, he said as he rushed off, too bad! Surprised but undaunted, I gave his comment little thought. (After all, while in graduate school, I had volunteered to be a teaching assistant for the course, loved the experience, and had enthusiastic students.)

The next day I encountered another colleague who asked what course I was teaching. Methods, I said. Her reply? Too bad! This time I had to ask why. The course, she said, was a tough sell. Up to half the students werent psych majors and took it to satisfy a science distribution requirement. Among the psych majors, many were seniors who had kept putting the course off, and few students aspired to research careers. The bottom line, she said, was that the course content didnt intrinsically interest most students. I told her I already had heard about these issues and looked forward to the challenge of teaching such a diverse group.