Research Requirements for PSYC 101

All psychology classes provide research experience intended to expose students to a sample of the methods underlying modern psychological research. These experiences include such things as learning about research through lectures and colloquia, serving as a participant in psychology experiments, reading and critiquing research articles, assisting a faculty member or graduate student in a research project, serving as an experimenter and collecting data, analyzing data, conducting a research project as part of a group, and finally, designing and conducting an original research project for a senior thesis or honors thesis. For this class, there is a research requirment which is normally satisfied by participating in five (5) hours of experiments. Although serving as a participant in psychology experiments is one way to gain valuable research knowledge, such participation is always voluntary. Therefore, in PSYC 101 there are several ways of satisfying the research requirement:

• A student may participate in 5 hours of psychology experiments. Informally this is known as the "subject pool". A student can sign up for participation in psychology experiments by going to http://experimetrix.com/Rice and clicking on “new.user” or “sign.up”. etc.
• Students who do not wish to participate in psychology experiments can fulfill the requirement (and earn the extra credit points) by writing two-page research reports on each of 5 psychological research articles assigned by the instructor.
• Serving as a research assistant. Please see the instructor if you wish to consider this option.

Most of you will elect the subject pool option. Please note that the paper or research assistant options should be chosen early in the semester. They are not meant to be backups for those who postpone signing up for experiments and then discover that there are not enough experiments open to satisfy the requirement.

Credit: Generally completion of this requirement does not affect your grade. If you select the paper or experiment assistant options and fail to complete the work satisfactorily 3 points will be deducted from your final grade average. If you select the subject pool option (the default), 1 point will be deducted from the final grade for each 2 hours of the requirement not completed. Thus a student who does none of the required hours would have 2.5 point deducted.

Extra Credit: You may earn extra course credit by participating in more than the required 5 hours of experiments. You will be given 1 point for every 2 hours of extra credit up to a total of 2 points or 4 hours. Thus a student who successfully participated in 9 hours of experiments would have 2 extra points added to the final grade. Those who elect to satisfy the basic experimental requirement by writing a paper or being a research assistant can also get extra points through the subject pool at the rate of 1 extra point per 2 hours of participation. Thus, a student who serves as a research assistant can also participate as a subject in an experiment and get up to 2 extra course points.

The Subject Pool Option

The information you will need to participate in the subject pool can be found at http://experimetrix.com/Rice/ One of the links on that page provides a copy of a record sheet you can use to keep a record of your participation. If there are problems with how may hours you have been given, this sheet will provide a backup record of your participation. Experimenters should initial this sheet after the experiment, and this provides a definitive record of your participation.

Another link discusses your particular rights and responsibilities in this regard. Please check out this page and print off a copy for future reference. In addition to what you will read there I would like to emphasize two points.

• First, while these experiments may be an imposition for some of you some of the time, the people who are running the experiments take them very seriously. Please treat the experimenters and the experiments with due respect. Minimally that means showing up if you have signed up, arriving on time, and following the instructions of the experimenter.
• Second, the experimenters also have obligations to you. I expect that they will treat you with respect, and that means, among other things, their taking seriously the fact that these experiences should have educational value for you. No one can make you learn what you do not wish to learn, but the experimenters should respond appropriately to your genuine interest and requests for additional information. Sometimes they will not be able to answer your questions immediately, but any questions should be answered in a timely fashion. If you think that you have been treated rudely or cavalierly, please let me know. 

Note that you will be required to assign your participation hours to a particular course. This will not be done automatically, and it is difficult for instructors to do this for you.

The Paper Option 

If you have ethical objections to being a participant in experiments or simply want to read some research papers, you may satisfy the research requirement by writing five (5) two-page reports on assigned research papers. We will make an effort to find articles that are interesting to you and comprehensible. Research reports will receive grades of satisfactory or unsatisfactory. You must see the instructor before Nov. 1 to work out the details on your assignments. This option is not meant to be used by those who wait until the last minute to sign up for experiments and find there are not enough available experiments.

The Research Assistant Option

Several on-going research projects in the department can use some assistance typically for data entry, preparation of experimental materials, and the like. While the initial work on these projects is usually not glamorous, it is an opportunity for you to find out more about the details of research projects and to work with graduate students and faculty. Students who select this option often end up attaching themselves to a particular research group and doing independent research in subsequent years. There is a limit on how many students are needed to serve in this capacity. A student working as a paid research assistant may not use that experience as a substitute for experimental participation in this course. An announcement will be made in class about a meeting for those who are interested in this option.

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