Oh Annette, you are a highminded researcher, but oh the entangled issues!
I sometimes think it is impossible to set a free choice situation in an
actual class because of the well defined power relationships. Best, KB
--On Tuesday, September 26, 2006 2:10 PM -0700 "Annette Taylor, Ph. D."
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:r
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]
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