Dr. David B Strohmetz

Undergraduate psychology curricula commonly require a research methods course (Norcross et al., 2016). Despite it being central to high-quality programs (Dunn et al., 2007), students often dislike their methods course (Rajecki et al., 2005). If we wish to improve student attitudes and learning in research methods courses, we should endeavor to garner a deeper understanding regarding students’ perceptions of research methods. We did this by having research methods students complete an online survey during the first few weeks of the semester, asking about their perceptions of the course’s purpose and challenges. While respondents endorsed the idea that the course helps them learn to conduct research, students perceived that the primary purpose was preparation for graduate school or other psychology classes. Participants expected that the scientific writing and data analysis aspects of the course would be most challenging. Not recognizing a methods course’s value may lead students to underappreciate the course’s utility and miss out on a valuable opportunity to cultivate skills. Through a better understanding of students’ attitudes toward their methods course, instructors can identify opportunities for reinforcing the course’s importance within the psychology curriculum as well as students’ postbaccalaureate success.

Communication is a core outcome for psychology undergraduates upon graduation (American Psychological Association, 2013) and a skill that employers expect (Appleby, 2014). Within research methods courses, students' psychology programs tend to focus heavily on teaching APA style as a way for students to learn the rhetoric of the field (Madigan et al., 1995). As we teach students APA style writing in undergraduate psychology curricula, we may overemphasize APA formatting, just one aspect of APA style, over the skill of communication (e.g., appropriate voice). Hence, we may be missing the forest for the trees. Focusing on mastering APA formatting, which changes over time and is increasingly available as built-in software templates, over learning to communicate in a precise and persuasive way may be a disservice to students. We argue that faculty resources for teaching APA style need more emphasis on the facilitation of scientific voice over formatting. In addition, psychology faculty need more empirically tested support for how to best serve the needs of students beyond graduation in determining how to balance APA format and scientific voice in teaching APA style. The discipline also needs more research to determine how learning APA format influences students' perceptions and enjoyment for the science of psychology.

Experimenter effects, or the impact that an experimenter can independently have on a study’s outcome, is an important consideration in social and behavioral research. These effects can occur in two ways. Noninteractional experimenter effects involve study biases that do not directly impact participants’ actual behaviors. Examples include biases in the decisions an experimenter makes, such as choice of study stimuli, types of observations made, and data analysis strategies. Interactional experimenter biases arise through the interactions between the experimenter and the participant. Examples include the experimenter’s biosocial and psychosocial attributes which may affect a participant’s behavior independent of the study variables. Experimenter expectations can also bias a study’s outcome in favor of its hypotheses. The potential for experimenter effects emphasizes the importance of good study design, including the use of properly trained experimenters blind to the study’s hypotheses and transparency in one’s study decisions.

The American Psychological Association (APA) advocates for professional development within undergraduate psychology programs, emphasizing the development of several employable skills before graduation (APA, 2013). However, there are few resources to help psychology programs, or students themselves, monitor skill development. The Employable Skills Self-Efficacy Survey (ESSES) allows departments, faculty, and students to determine a baseline of skill efficacy, as well as monitor the development of skills throughout a psychology program or as a result of a particular experience. We assessed the psychometric properties of the ESSES. The scale has strong internal consistency (α = .66 to .87) and test-retest reliability (r = .76 to .89), as well as convergent validity between particular skill domains and various professional self-efficacy measures. We discuss the ways departments, faculty, and students may use the ESSES as a tool for skill development.

Nearly every psychology major takes a course in research methods. While several studies have examined students' perceptions of research methods courses (e.g., Rajecki, Appleby, Williams, Johnson, & Jeschke, 2005; Vittengl et al., 2004), few investigate faculty's views on these courses. The current study explored faculty perceptions regarding course purpose, major course challenges for faculty and students, students' achievement, skill development, and pedagogy. One hundred and one psychology faculty throughout the United States who had experience teaching research methods completed an online survey. Results indicate consensus about the purposes of the course, particularly the importance of teaching scientific thinking, and perceived student achievement of this goal. Faculty report a variety of challenges to teaching and student learning in a methods course, some of which focus on student-related, rather than course content issues. When examining teaching techniques, faculty indicate that having students conduct research is more of a conceptual teaching tool than it is a course goal. The findings also suggest a potentially missed opportunity for skill cultivation in the course. By learning what people think the purpose of the course is, faculty can make sure teaching practices align with those goals and more effectively accomplish them. The results of this study can also help faculty better communicate the "why" behind methods requirements, which may help students better see and appreciate the utility of methods, and improve students' perceptions of the course.

Editors’ Commentary
Designing a course to be engaging can be challenging, especially when the course in question is one that students often dread having to take and traditional sources of inspiration are limited, static, uneven in quality, or cost-prohibitive. In this chapter, authors David Strohmetz, Natalie Ciarocco, and Gary Lewandowski discuss the development of a website devoted to the sharing of openly-licensed and peer-reviewed strategies and demonstrations for teaching research methods and statistics. In doing so they demonstrate how individual faculty can marry the recognized resources and practices of their discipline, such as support from professional societies and peer review, with open licensing to be able to ‘take a little piece
of their world and improve it.’

Teaching strategies for topics related to death and dying are often journaling, reflection, and group discussions. This study describes an innovative demonstration in which pairs of students made hypothetical medical decisions using a technique similar to the one used on the American game show, The Newlywed Game. One hundred students at a private mid-Atlantic University participated in a study evaluating the impact of this demonstration on raising students' awareness of issues surrounding medical decision-making and the need to clearly communicate one's desires to others. This active demonstration helps students learn about difficult issues in a meaningful way.

Discovering the Scientist Within is the only book on the market that teaches students about research methods using a case study approach. All the design-focused chapters present students with a single study described from start to finish. The chapter starts by asking students to consider a scenario and then walks them through the steps of the study: formulating a research question, performing a literature review, constructing a data collection method, considering ethics, refining the method, gathering data, understanding the statistical results, and reporting the results in APA style. Students come away with a practical understanding of the research process and useful practice in the basic steps that comprise all studies. The book also has excellent pedagogy, starting with clear Learning Outcomes at the beginning of each chapter, "Your Turn" assessments as the end of each section, and end-of-chapter Review Questions and Applying What You've Learned activities. As part of their class projects, students are often asked to run some statistics and write in APA style. This text has ample support for both, including Appendices on both topics, as well as in-chapter material modeling writing and reporting in APA style. Best of all, the book comes integrated with new Research in Action activities from the same author team. These activities extend the core mission of the book by putting students in the role of a researcher and simulating the kinds of decisions they would face in conceptualizing and executing a study. Each chapter includes an activity (a few chapters have more than one), and the activities are called out in the chapter. The new edition features coverage of "fake news," as well as "Our Research Plan at a Glance," a summary of the study featured in each chapter. The book is also available in a LaunchPad course for the first time. Students will have access to the full eBook, the LearningCurve adaptive quizzing system, the Research in Action activities, and other resources. This book also comes with an unprecedented set of instructor supplements, many of them prepared by the authors themselves. These include a full instructor's manual, including supplemental examples for each chapter, suggestions for in-class activities and demonstrations, lab/group project ideas, a feature designed to enhance psychological/information literacy, and suggestions for using end of chapter materials. Instructors also get access to unique PowerPoint slide decks that incorporate the same active learning and hands-on approach as the textbook. Chapter PowerPoint slides include additional examples, discussion questions, demonstrations and activities built right into the presentation to help bring the material to life. For design chapters, they provide two sets of PowerPoint slides: one set that incorporates the chapter's research question and a more traditional set that focuses on key concepts.

In light of the rising cost of attendance and student indebtedness, a national conversation has emerged regarding the value of a college degree and its ability to support the types of skills employers consider necessary or important for a graduate's long-term career success. We first discuss these skills along with national initiatives such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities' (AACU's) Liberal Education and America's Promise and Lumina Foundation's Degree Qualifications Profile that strive to reconceptualize an undergraduate education to emphasize the broad skills and knowledge one should acquire. Next, we review the APA Guidelines 2.0 and their overlap with these national initiatives with the emphasis on skill development. Finally, we make a series of recommendations as to how psychology faculty and departments can use these guidelines to develop a curriculum with an emphasis on skill development that optimizes student success in both the workplace and in graduate or professional school.

‘Experimenter artifacts’ and ‘subject artifacts’ are uncontrolled systematic errors that can arise within the experimental situation. Experimenter artifacts can be classified as being noninteractional or interactional. Subject artifacts can result from demand characteristics within the experimental situation and from the motivations of the subjects themselves. While there are strategies for minimizing potential artifacts, experimenters must be mindful of ethical considerations.