Welcome! This repository contains course materials for the Dartmouth undergraduate course Laboratory in Psychological Science (PSYC 11). The syllabus may be found here. Feel free to follow along with the course materials (whether you are officially enrolled in the course or just visiting!), submit comments and suggestions, etc. If you are a course instructor, you may feel free to use these materials in your own courses (attribution is appreciated).
While I strive for 100% accuracy in my courses, I recognize that I am very unlikely to achieve that goal. If you notice inaccuracies, inefficiencies, and/or if you have any other suggestions, feature requests, questions, comments, concerns, etc. pertaining to this course, I encourage you to open an issue and/or submit a pull request. This course is continually evolving as I attempt to maintain its currency and relevance in a rapidly developing field; your help, feedback, and contributions are much appreciated!
Start here! The bulk of your learning in this course will occur from your participation laboratory exercises. There are no exams, and you won't need to "study" the material in the traditional sense. Rather, you will build out your skill set through direct applications of the material.
The "point" of this course is to teach you how to carry out psychological research. In practice, this essentially comes down to being able to write a scientific article. Specifically, you'll learn to:
- Ask questions in a scientific way (e.g., figuring out what your question is and how to effectively formulate it)
- Motivate your research question (this corresponds to the "Introduction" section of a scientific article)
- Describe how you studied your question (this corresponds to the "Methods" section of a scientific article)
- Describe and interpret your findings (this corresponds to the "Results" section of a scientific article)
- Situate your work within the broader literature (this corresponds to the "Discussion" section of a scientific article)
Why should you care about learning to write a scientific article if your goal is to learn about how to carry out scientific work? There are a few reasons. First, to carry out research effectively, you need to be able to formulate your question and approach clearly and systematically. Putting your thoughts into a formal written document can help with this. Second, science is only useful to humanity as a species (or society, etc.) to the extent that it can be communicated to other people. You can have the most profound, brilliant, amazing thought anyone has ever had-- but if you can't communicate it with someone else, that potential contribution will be lost to history. Third, scientific articles are the most common (and most trusted) way for scientists to share their research. A key part of learning how to "do science" is understanding how other people have done science (e.g., approached similar or related questions, communicated their findings, collected data, etc.). When you deeply understand what the key parts of a scientific article are, you'll be able to more effectively read and critically evaluate other scientists' primary findings--- not as filtered or interpreted through newspapers or a quick blurb in an advertisement, but based on the original report, from the people who actually carried out the work.
In the first 5(ish) weeks of the course, you'll do roughly one lab exercise per week. Aside from the first lab (which is intended to gently introduce you to the course), each lab will be organized around one section of a scientific article.
During the second half of the course, you'll carry out a complete study with a small group. At that point, you'll have all of the tools you need to do "real science": you'll effectively formulate your question, design and implement an experiment, collect and analyze data, interpret your results, and wrap everything up into your own scientific article. You'll also present an overview of your findings in a poster session, attended by students and faculty in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. (There's an award for the best poster!) You'll even have a (modest) research budget that you can use to carry out your study, purchase supplies or equipment, etc.
For Dartmouth students who are enrolled in PSYC 11, we will use Slack to organize notes, files, and other communications related to the course. You can gain access to the class workspace by clicking the link and logging in with your Dartmouth credentials.
You will be using your laptop computer to collect, analyze, or present nearly every day of the course. You should bring your laptop with you to every class meeting.
Note that not every course meeting has associated slides (or an associated lecture). Dates are approximate and subject to change.
| Date | Topic | Link to editable slides | PDF link |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 25, 2024 | Introduction and overview | KEY | |
| March 27, 2024 | Statistical building blocks | KEY | |
| March 29, 2024 | Data wrangling | KEY | |
| April 1, 2024 | Motivating your science | KEY | |
| April 5, 2024 | What are the limits of data and stats? | KEY | |
| April 8, 2024 | Effective explaining | KEY | |
| April 12, 2024 | Evaluating methods | KEY | |
| April 15, 2024 | Creating data | KEY | |
| April 17, 2024 | Exploring and understanding data | KEY | |
| April 19, 2024 | Quick-start guide to digging into data | KEY | |
| April 22, 2024 | Searching and reviewing the relevant scientific literature | KEY | |
| April 26, 2024 | Synthesizing across studies (and findings) | KEY | |
| April 26, 2024 | Logistics and announcements | KEY | |
| April 29, 2024 | Final project: getting started | KEY | |
| May 1, 2024 | Quick-start guide to experimental design | KEY | |
| May 3, 2024 | Project management | KEY | |
| May 6, 2024 | Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS) | PPTX | |
| May 15, 2024 | Introduction to poster presentations | KEY | |
| May 17, 2024 | Effective scientific writing | KEY |
Please view the materials below before collecting data from human participants.
| Description | Link and filetype |
|---|---|
| Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS) | PPTX |
| Belmont Report | |
| Nuremburg Code | |
| Jesse's Intent |
All assignments should be submitted via the course Canvas page unless otherwise specified. Many of the lab exercises will be carried out in groups. While you are encouraged to communicate with other students (in your group or in the class more broadly), ultimately you need to write up your own version of each assignment (e.g., in your own words, using your own ideas, etc.). The one exception to this is your final paper, which may be co-authored by your entire research team.
Note: Only assignments marked active are guaranteed to be in their final form-- inactive assignments are provided to help set expectations about future assignments, but they may be edited or changed prior to be formally assigned. Expired assignments are past their due date (and therefore may no longer be handed in for credit). All assignments are due at "midnight" (i.e., 11:59 PM, Hanover time) on their indicated due dates.
| Assignment | Point value | Status | Due date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birthday lab | 0 points | expired | N/A |
| Pitch session lab | 10 points | expired | April 8, 2024 |
| Picture drawing lab | 10 points | expired | April 15, 2024 |
| Data sleuthing lab | 10 points | expired | April 22, 2024 |
| Literature review lab | 10 points | expired | April 29, 2024 |
| Review CHPS training materials | 0 points | expired | May 6, 2024 |
| Attend CPHS training session (virtual) | 0 points | expired | May 6, 2024 |
| Weekly snippet 1 | 1 point | expired | May 3, 2024 |
| Weekly snippet 2 | 1 point | expired | May 10, 2024 |
| Weekly snippet 3 | 1 point | active | May 17, 2024 |
| Weekly snippet 4 | 1 point | inactive | May 24, 2024 |
| Weekly snippet 5 | 1 point | inactive | May 29, 2024 |
| Poster presentation | 15 points | inactive | May 29, 2024 |
| Final paper | 40 points | inactive | May 31, 2024 |
| Group contributions statement | 0 points | inactive | May 31, 2024 |