Читать книгу The Research Experience - Ann Sloan Devlin - Страница 108

At this point, you should have thought of a research idea and examined what has already been done in that area. By now you know the physical holdings and electronic resources your institution’s library has, how the interlibrary loan system works (make sure you have created your own account), how to search for journal articles through several different databases, and how to request articles that you cannot immediately download.

An important idea in this chapter is the critical task of narrowing the gap between some variable of interest, such as participation in college athletics, and its relationship to an outcome, such as college achievement. Your job is to eliminate competing variables by narrowing the research question sufficiently to rule out the most likely alternative explanations for any significant relationship that emerges. You cannot control every variable that may play a role, but you can certainly pose your research question in a way that reduces the likelihood that one of those competing variables provides a better explanation than your candidate.

This chapter presented a timeline that you may find useful in planning the work of the semester. Staying on top of your deadlines will also reduce the likelihood that you will engage in academic dishonesty.

If you have not had time to consider them earlier, here is the list of Revisit and Respond questions from this chapter.

 2.1Why might it make sense to think of some ideas before consulting the literature?What advantages are there to using your own personal experience to develop research ideas?Write down two potential research ideas that come out of your personal experience and two that come from the Internet.

 2.2What is the Library of Congress classification system?What is a keyword?What kinds of resources would you expect to find in the Reference section?In what ways can librarians help with your research project?

 2.3What do the number of experiments and sophistication of data analyses suggest about an article?What is Beall’s List?When we talk about the publication practices of a journal, what do we mean?Why do reviewers need ethical standards?State the null hypothesis in your own words.Why might replications become more common in the future?What is the file drawer phenomenon?

 2.4Explain how you would obtain an article that is not available as full text downloadable.What is the difference between PDF Full Text and HTML Full Text?What is the difference in journal coverage between PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES?

 2.5Explain what information you should keep track of in each of the following sections: Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion.What are the three sections of the Method?What is the internal consistency of a measure?What is the shape of the Introduction? The Discussion?Why are the Limitations and Future Directions sections important to develop research ideas?

 2.6Explain what a third variable is and why it makes sense to narrow the research gap.What role do demographic variables play in narrowing the research gap?Where should you look to determine which demographic variables to include?