(Okay, third attempt to send this...)
I did a summer fellowship on "Why do undergraduates find it difficult to
find ideas for experimental research projects in psychology?". I'd be happy
to send the current version of the document as an attachment (MSWord) if
you're interested. A brief summary - I noticed over time that many students
either
- cannot think of an idea at all, or
- have (and are often wedded to) "breakthrough" projects ("I want to
demonstrate that intercessionary prayer works"), or
- have (and are often wedded to) "so what?" projects ("I want to see if
playing different kinds of music affects studying"), or
- have (and are often wedded to) non-causal projects ("I want to compare
men's and women's reasons for smoking").
Some of the difficulty seems to be in the fact that students lack
the background knowledge about
- phenomena (simple description: what DOES happen?)
- terms
- theories
- current professional practices
- current disputes in the field
The latter three in particular seem to be important sources of ideas
for professional researchers, and seem to be the areas in which students are
most likely to be lacking.
In addition, among the reasons I proposed for these difficulties is
the possibility that students enter with deeply different basic assumptions
about the causes of human behavior. We take the basic philosophical position
that
- people do what they do at least in part for reasons having to do with
their specific interactions with the environment.
However, students may assume that either
- People do what they do because they are the kinds of people who do those
kinds of things (essentialism), or
- People do what they do because they freely choose to do those things
(strong free will).
Either of those basic philosophical assumptions is likely to
completely undermine a student's curiosity about the causes of human
behavior in a way that will make it very difficult for her to come up with a
meaningful project idea.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
