with specific predictions, a clear statement of hypotheses makes conducting the analyses straightforward. This sounds easier to do than it is. Even in exploratory correlational research where the investigator wants to look at the relationship of one situation to another, without an intervention, a statement of hypotheses would help guide the research effort. What is it that you really want to know? An interest in type of student housing and sense of community could be turned into an explicit statement with a hypothesis such as:
Students living in triples converted from doubles will report a lower sense of community than will students living in nonconverted doubles.
In the Introduction, note which hypotheses have been supported in the literature and where conflicts have occurred because this will highlight areas where work remains to be done (to resolve the conflicts). Other research opportunities are highlighted when authors mention a recent surge in research activity on a given topic after a period without much activity. For example, just a few studies on residence halls were done each year from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, at which time interest in the topic grew (refer to Figure 2.7). Why? Were new residence halls being constructed, which in turn led to the opportunity for field research? Your own experience with student housing would be a good place to start to consider the impact of a variety of student housing arrangements (e.g., campus apartments vs. high-rise residence halls).
The Method Section
Method: Heading in American Psychological Association (APA) research paper in which you present your Participants, Materials/Measures/Instruments, and Procedure.
Participants: Section of your Method in which you describe the “who” of your study.
Vulnerable populations: Populations (e.g., children, prisoners, or those with impaired decision-making ability) for whom a full institutional review board (IRB) review is typically required for research involving these individuals.
Amazon MTurk: Online paid crowdsourcing platform to acquire participants.
Convenience sample: Participants gathered through their mere availability and accessibility to the researcher.
The Method section of articles you read is particularly important because novice researchers often struggle with the “who” (the participants), the “what” (the measures), and the “how” (the specific steps) in a research project. Following APA style, the Method section is divided into subsections involving participants, materials or measures (also called instruments), and procedure. Pay attention to the particular approach that is used in a given area of study. What is the typical approach: Observation? Interviews? Self-report surveys? Is the research correlational (no manipulation of variables), is there experimental manipulation, or a combination? You might try an approach to the research question different from the one typically used.
Participants
One of the biggest challenges is obtaining the “Who” for the study. Often the participants, the who, will be college students, recruited at the researcher’s institution (see also Chapter 11 on recruiting participants). In the articles you read, notice whether the participants were college students. Adult volunteers from the community? A special population like residents of an assisted-living complex?
Sample size is an important consideration. How many people participated? If participants number more than 100, this might be an issue at small institutions where the participant pool is limited (see Chapter 11). If a topic requires a specialized population, such as prisoners, this is also a consideration. Certain groups such as prisoners and children are considered vulnerable populations. Not only may such populations be difficult to obtain, as in the case of inmates, but also research with vulnerable populations requires special ethics review (see Chapter 4).
How were the participants recruited? Through a participant pool (i.e., usually students who chose to participate in research for extra credit in a course)? Were they contacted via e-mail? Direct mailing? Via Amazon MTurk (or Amazon Mechanical Turk), a crowdsourcing platform sponsored by Amazon.com where researchers (requesters) post studies and participants (workers) complete the posted tasks for pay (see Chapter 11)? Were the participants randomly selected within the population or through a convenience sample, gathered through their mere availability and accessibility to the researcher (e.g., people who stopped at a research table in the library or student union; the participant pool)? It is worth noting that the participant pool is a convenience sample and is not necessarily representative of the student population. Did the authors use a snowball sample (i.e., asking people to participate who in turn asked others to participate)? Issues of sampling are covered in Chapter 11.
Snowball sample: Nonprobability sample in which individuals who participate in a study invite others to participate in the study, and they in turn invite still others.
Materials: Section of the Method in which you describe the “with what” of your study; often called measures, instruments, or apparatus.
Measures: In the Method section where you describe the scales or instruments used.
Internal consistency: Statistical measure, usually expressed as Cronbach’s alpha, which reflects the degree to which each item of the measure is tapping the construct of interest.
Procedure: Section of your Method in which you describe the how of your study.
Materials/Measures/Instruments
Finding appropriate materials or measures (see Chapter 5 on qualities of measures) is among the biggest challenges for researchers. The first step is identifying what measures might be appropriate. As was true for identifying seminal articles, keep track of the scales and measures used repeatedly in a given area. For example, if you are interested in the topic of self-esteem, you will repeatedly see citations to Morris Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale (1965). This scale has a high internal consistency (in the neighborhood of .88), which means the items relate to each other (i.e., are measuring the same concept). In addition, there are only 10 items, which is a consideration in terms of the number of items you may ask respondents to complete.
Procedure
What precisely did participants do? The level of detail in this section should enable you to replicate the study or the procedure. Consider the time involved in collecting the data—were there individual interviews? Group administration? Online questionnaire administration? Was there equipment? Were there costs involved? (Payment for copyrighted questionnaires? Payment to participants? Incentives such as a lottery?) In addition to these considerations, are you qualified to administer a given test (usually this applies to clinical measures)? A description of required qualifications is typically stated in the description of the measure. More in-depth coverage of Measures appears in Chapter 5.
The Results Section
Look at the presentation of the Results section (sometimes called findings in qualitative research); could you understand the statistics? Are sophisticated approaches, such as structural equation modeling, being used in this area of research? Could you see yourself doing statistical analyses of this complexity? Note the structure of the Results section. What information is presented first? How are tables and figures used?
The