Chapter 11 Planning Research

Modified: 2006-07-10

GETTING AN IDEA

YOUR RESEARCH PLAN

AN EXAMPLE LITERATURE SEARCH

ADVANTAGES OF A LITERATURE SEARCH

ACCESSING THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE IN PSYCHOLOGY

Use:

http://www.saumag.edu/library/

Then, click on: Find Articles/Resources by Subject/Social & Behavioral Sciences/

Then, click on: PsycINFO

to access.

The more commonly used PsycINFO fields are marked with an asterisk (*).

Thesaurus

PsycINFO Search Example

"depth of processing" and "face". (We use quotes here to illustrate the exact search terms we typed. In PsycINFO, you would type the word(s) without quotes.)

Conduct a PsycINFO search and enter your results in the spaces provided:

Search Term

Our hits

Your hits (2006-01-27)

depth of processing

283

1052

face

27,268

23,789

face and depth of processing

16

34

PsycINFO Operators: OR, AND, PRE/n, W/n and AND NOT

Citation List and How it was Culled

Organizing the Abstracts and Articles

 

Figure 11.1 Facsimile of pages from PsycINFO

In the Know: When discussing research literature, psychologists used the author(s) last name(s) and the date of publication as a kind of shorthand to identify the article.

NEW RESEARCH IDEAS

Brainstorming

Table 11.2 Focus-Group Generated Research Ideas

  • Eyewitness and facial recognition by race
    • Inspired by Anthony, Copper, and Mullen (1992), several students wished to investigate the effect of cross&endash;racial facial identification.
  • The effect of emotion or trauma on recall of faces
    • One student wondered how emotion or trauma might affect facial recognition and depth of processing. She speculated that under high levels of emotion, facial recognition would be better under both shallow and deep processing.
  • Matching adult faces to childhood photographs
    • A mother wondered whether strangers could match photos of children's faces with their corresponding adult faces.
  • Recognizing strangers who are regularly seen in a variety of settings
    • People seen in particular contexts are easily recognized. However, recognizing the same people outside of their usual context is more difficult. Does level of processing make a difference?
  • Memory for faces by attractiveness and gender
    • Some wondered if attractive people are more easily recognized and whether there is a gender effect.
  • Recognizing passersby riding in automobiles
    • In many rural areas, drivers wave at other drivers who are traveling the oncoming lane. One student commented that this characteristic made for a field experiment in which drivers self&endash;selected themselves into wavers and non&endash;wavers.
  • Recognizing familiar people in unfamiliar automobiles
    • In small towns, residents learn to associate autos with their owners. One student proposed to have people drive around in their own cars and later in rental cars and to count the number of waves they received from other drivers.
  • Effect of frequency and duration of exposure on facial recognition memory
    • A student wondered whether frequency of exposure to the same face or the length of time a face was seen would affect recognition in both shallow and deep processing.

OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION

MAKING PERSONAL CONTACT

THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY

WHAT HAVE WE DONE?

Notice how far we have come in this chapter. We started with one reference (Bower & Karlin, 1974). We searched PsycINFO using two terms (face and depth of processing), found 16 hits, and culled them to 10. We obtained the articles and put them in a binder in alphabetical order by first author. Along the way, we learned a lot about our topic. The next step is to flesh out the idea into a full&endash;fledged prospectus.

Think of the process described above as a model you might follow. Notice how much organization we imposed on our idea and the information it generated. Getting yourself organized is one benefit of writing a prospectus. Also notice how much more we now know about our idea. You can use this process on any research idea.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROSPECTUS

THE COMPLETED PROSPECTUS

GLOSSARY

abstract--Short summary of an article or the contents of a book.

citation--The author(s), publication date, title, journal or publisher, and pages of an article or book.

database--An organized collection of information.

field--A place in a database to store a particular type of information.

hit--A record that matches a set of search criteria.

literature--The entire collection of published research in a scientific discipline.

operator--Terms that aid searching such as OR, AND, PRE/n, W/n, and AND NOT (PsycINFO examples).

prospectus--A detailed plan for a research project.

record--All database fields about an item such as an article or book.

replication--The repetition of a scientific procedure in order to confirm the original results.

search engine--Computer program that allows users to search a database or the World Wide Web.

search term--Word or phrase used in a search engine to find a record or URL.

thesaurus--Words or phrases that are similar to the target word or phrase.

URL--Uniform resource locator; a web address that consists of a protocol such as http or ftp and a domain name.

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