In the context of an Oxford Universitypsychology team's research report Rick Froman wondered if the term"naïveparticipant" was specifically British usage. A Google search shows itoccurs in ADictionary of Psychology, Oxford University Press, 2008 and in The SAGE Handbook of Social Psychology:Concise Student Edition in line with what Rick suggested, namely, aparticipant who is unaware of the purpose of the research or the hypothesisbeing tested. But it also comes up in American publications, so it is not exclusively British usage: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1320&context=ijes
AllenEsterson Formerlecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London allenester...@compuserve.com http://www.esterson.org -----Original Message----- From: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> To: tips digest recipients <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Sent: Sat, Jun 29, 2013 6:30 am Subject: tips digest: June 28, 2013 Subject: tips digest: June 28, 2013 From: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Reply-To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu> Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 01:00:01 -0400 TIPS Digest for Friday, June 28, 2013. 1. A flavorful research article --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: allenester...@compuserve.com To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13076.897dfc4f20f0edf00528e4c6f4ad2c5b&n=T&l=tips&o=26272 or send a blank email to leave-26272-13076.897dfc4f20f0edf00528e4c6f4ad2...@fsulist.frostburg.edu Attached Message From: rfro...@jbu.edu <rfro...@jbu.edu> Subject: A flavorful research article Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 10:50:30 -0500 While reading a research report on the topic of the effect of cutlery on taste in the open access journal Flavour, I noted this sentence: “Forty naïve Oxford University undergraduate students participated in Experiment 2…”. After wondering if that wasn’t a redundancy (or if this description would apply to a majority or only a minority of Oxford students), I wondered what the word “naïve” might mean in this usage. It was used as if it were familiar jargon to describe an element of the design. Is this a common British term to mean “blinded to the experimental design or hypothesis”? My next favorite line from the article was, “all of the participants were British, that is, native English speakers, save one participant who was bilingual”. I would have thought such as assumption to be more likely made of American than British university students (imagine the humor if the sentence had read, “all of the participants were American, that is, native English speakers”). Maybe they weren’t really referring to how many languages of fluency but just that their first language was English. It was also interesting that the Methodology section came after the Results and Conclusions. If you couldn’t access the hyperlink above, the URL of the article is: http://www.flavourjournal.com/content/pdf/2044-7248-2-21.pdf. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor of Psychology Box 3519 John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 rfro...@jbu.edu (479) 524-7295 http://bit.ly/DrFroman --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=26276 or send a blank email to leave-26276-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
