Quoting "Shearon, Tim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Annette- I'd have no problem with what you describe here either. You seem to be very open about what you are doing and why. Am I correct in assuming you are notifying the student's up front so they can have the choice to continue or not?
Yes, students are told on the very fist day of class what I am doing, why I am doing it and that they can decide at any time throughout the semester to (a) complete the consent form, or (b) withdraw their consent along the way--there is no negative consequence.
We also do associated activities in the classroom. For example I am interested in how learning strategies are related to critical thinking skills so they complete the MCKeachie learning strategies questionnaire (MSLQ), (which I later regress onto normalized gain scores for content items in a pretest questionnaire given on the first day of class) and they get their scores back on the MSLQ and we talk in class about the varieties of strategies and which ones seem to correlate better with critical thinking and with performance-in-class measures. We also talk about the critical thinking test (I use the Halpern Critical Thinking Assessment) which has 5 subscales and again we discuss in some depth in my intro course the elements of critical that are reflected in the subscales.
They always know their scores, so they know what they can work on, if they chose to--even if the scores have no norms--and we talk about norms when we talk about psych testing in the abnormal chapter.
We also talk about confidentiality versus anonymity in terms of research ethics. There are all kinds of great teaching moments that come out of the project, and not all students give consent. I get about 85% on average who give consent. I've never asked anyone why they don't, because I feel personally like that would be crossing some line I shouldn't, although I am curious....
There is no pressure and most students are relieved to have at least a good chunk of their research participation requirement satisfied along with assignments they would be doing in class anyway :) I'm not sure that all of this isn't entangled somehow, but then again, I don't know how I could do the research without using the data generated by students in my classes. Also, the ability to have teaching moments from this tends to excite the students about the research and many of them follow up in the next semester or two asking how their year compared to previous years? and did I have the group data analyzed yet? and is there a report someplace they can read yet? etc. I see the teaching moments as a 'benefit' that might offset 'costs'.
Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
