Texts: Same as Fall semesterCore Goals of the Psychology DepartmentPrinciple Goals of the CourseClass FormatAttendanceIndependent ProjectIn-Semester and Final ExamsExtra CreditCheatingIndependent Samples T-testClass DatesWhat you should be doingWork on your IRB proposal;Proposal due to me by 5 pm on Jan. 19thFeb. 26-Mar. 2: Week 7Psychology 202, Spring 2007Robert HortonEmail: [email protected] Office: Baxter, 302 Office phone: 6476 Home phone: 866-1622Office hours: by appt. and any time my door is open (meaning I am in the office).Texts: Same as Fall semesterCore Goals of the Psychology Department- CONTENT: to acquire a degree of mastery of both factual and conceptual knowledge in several areas of psychology. - THINKING SKILLS: To become habitually inquisitive, trustful of reason, and honest in facing personal biases; to actively evaluate knowledge and ideas. - SELF-EXPRESSION: to become competent and confident in the oral and written skills needed to speak and write with facility and sophistication about psychological issues and research.- THE METHODOLOGY OF PSYCHOLOGY: to acquire the ability to use the scientific method to generate and answer significant questions; to become increasingly independent in posing questions and pursuing answers through several research strategies. - PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIETY: to understand the nature of the complex relationship between psychological inquiry and social policy; to think critically about how the results of psychological research are used and how they might be used in the future. - HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: To understand and be able to evaluate critically the diversity of viewpoints about human nature and behavior represented over the course of psychology's history. This course will serve, in particular, the bolded goals above. This course is about a WAY OF UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD, OF BEING COMMITTED TO THE EVIDENCE Inferential statistics is a critical part of understanding what the evidence is telling us…..can we trust the evidence or did it happen by chance!Principle Goals of the Course1. To make you an inferential statistics stud! I.e., for you to understand the role of chancevariation and error in research and for you to learn which kinds of inferential statistics proceduresshould be used to analyze data that are collected from various types of research designs and methodologies.2. For you to conduct your own ground-breaking research, for you to write-up that research in a fantastic APA-style paper, and for you to impress the attendees of the Mid-AmericanUndergraduate Psychology Research Conference with your 12-minute presentation of your results3. To continue improving your understanding of what makes good research. At this point, you understand what internal, external, and construct validity are and what types of things in a research project implicate each type of validity. This semester, we will continue to reinforce knowledge in both of those domains while working to understand why some threats to validity are critical and compromise the validity of an entire project while other threats to validityare less critical. There will always be trade-offs in research (i.e., by increasing external validity, we will necessarily decrease internal validity), but sifting through and differentiating between the stuff that matters and that which really doesn’t is an important, and difficult, skill.In addition to these three major goals, this course will also facilitate your understanding of how towrite good research papers and conduct good research. I hope that you get excited about research and the possibility of being able to effectively ask and answer interesting questions. Class FormatWe will meet for class each week on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 9:45 am. On many of those mornings, we will be talking about new statistical procedures, when you use them, and how you calculate them both by hand and with SPSS. You will find that this semester is morestatistics heavy than was last semester. We will also use some of the class sessions to talk about research designs that are more complex than those we dealt with last semester. We will also use some of the class sessions to review material that has been covered during the semester. EVEN THOUGH THERE IS LESS WORK THIS SEMESTER THAN LAST, the material this semester is more difficult. Thus, it is important that we spend time reassessing each of the statistical procedures and how they relate to various methodologies. The laboratory time for this course will be spent either in research meetings (talking about your unique group project) or in the Lilly computer lab working with SPSS analyses. We will have research meetings each week during the first month or so of the course. We will have laboratory sessions on Feb. 19/20 and Feb. 26/27. These lab sessions will involve review of statistical procedures and analyses in SPSS. AttendanceAs with last semester, I will take attendance every day. You get 3 free absences (from laband class sessions combined). I will deduct two points from your final average for every day more than three that you miss. A couple of other things to keep in mind: (1) excused absences still count against your 3 free absences. If you have a serious illness or some other situation that takes you away from class for an extended period of time, come and see me. I’m a pretty reasonable guy, and we can normally work something out. To get an excused absence, come and talk to me about what is taking you away from class. Preferably, do this a day or two before you know you have to miss class. Also, understand that if you have an unexcused absence for a class during which a grade is assigned, you will not be allowed to make up that grade.(2) Call it a pet peeve, but tardiness really annoys me. If you are late to class, I will count a half-absence for you. These half-absences will count towards your 3 free absences. GradesYour grade in this course will be determined by your performance on classwork throughout the semester, two in-semester exams, your independent project paper, talk, and poster, your individual grade on the research project (grading by peers and faculty advisor), and a cumulative final exam. The percentage breakdown is given below: Task % of GradeStatistics Binder 7.53 In-semester exams 42.5 (10, 15, 17.5, respectively)IP project 20Paper: 15; Talk: 5Individual Grade on Project 10Peer Grade 5; Professor Eval 5Psy 201/202 Cumulative Final exam 20I will use the