Tag: Psychology

Participants and Prejudice

5 August 2014 /

During uni, a lot of focus is put on the ability to think critically, evaluate research, and work out how best to psychologically study the world…apparently. In all honesty, while evaluating results and testing methods is strictly marked, a student could easily coast through the entire three years without putting any deep thought into research participants and their dynamics.

When evaluating research, it’s easy to make superficial criticisms of the study based on one factor. This study uses only males? It’s androcentric. Only females? It’s gynocentric (and rare). Only Americans? It’s ethnocentric.

Beyond that most salient factor, however, that’s it for thinking about participants. And I’m questioning whether that is a form of prejudice or dehumanisation in a way: all we’re doing is reducing a group of complex individuals down to one factor, and claiming that one factor can explain their performance in the study.

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A New Research Culture?

21 July 2014 /

Last week, I posted about ways that websites could get implied, indirect, or direct consent from visitors, to ensure they had a consenting user base for user experience (UX) or technological experiments. The ways I posted were quite simple, being mostly based on straightforward modifications to existing strategies, and without changing much in the way the websites themselves treat research and data collection.

However, after finishing that post I started thinking about what websites would be like if their approach to research changed in a more fundamental way. This is probably (unfortunately) unrealistic at the moment, but its an approach that I would love to see realised.

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What is informed consent?

14 July 2014 /

Following on from last week’s post about the Facebook experiment, it seemed sensible to look at what methods can be used to gain fair consent in internet-based research.

Implied Consent
The simplest method, and one most commonly used in surveys and questionnaires, is Implied consent. This method means the requirement of a signed consent document is waived, and the consent is instead embedded in taking part. In a survey, this could be done by only showing the questions to people who ticked an “I agree to take part” button at the very beginning, and redirecting people who ticked “I do not agree to take part” away from the survey. This would be embedded or implied consent, as people would have to say they wanted to take part in order to see the questions.

For simple studies with little to no personally identifiable information, and little to no risk of harm, this method of gaining consent is good enough. However, if this method is done on studied where participant information isn’t stored, then participants have no way of requesting their own data to be withdrawn. Studies using this method can often be a flash in the pan- performed and then forgotten, with often no record of their methods, participants, or findings.

Therefore, for large-scale, complex, or important studies, implied consent isn’t the way to go.

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The Great Facebook Debate

7 July 2014 /

And by this, I am of course referring to the controversial experimental results published this week that show Facebook’s ability to induce emotions in people.

Although the study was actually carried out 2 years ago (January 11th-18th, 2012), it was approved in March 2014, and first published at the end of June 2014. Since the first news stories about it broke last week, legal institutions such as the UK Information Commissioners Office, and the US National Academy of Sciences, are investigating whether the experiment should have been approved.

However, the National Academy of Science are the people who published the paper in the first place- this goes beyond locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, and more resembles investigating the door for possible structural problems after the horse has already caused property damage.

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Hyperlexia

30 June 2014 /

A rarer offshoot of a learning disability today, and one that can almost be called a super-ability: my topic today is hyperlexia.

Silberberg and Silberberg (1967) were some of the first people to define hyperlexia, and they called it “the precocious ability to read without prior training, before the age of 5”.

Most people since then have used the early reading part of the definition, although some definitions also require cognitive or language disorder to be present- this changes how hyperlexia is diagnosed and/or studied.

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Good News :P

28 May 2014 /

After enjoying a few weeks of post-uni free time (and successfully passing my driving test), I got some brilliant news yesterday…

I have been accepted for a place on the Science Communication MSc course at UWE!  It’s conditional upon me getting a 2:2, but based on my current analysis of my grades so far, that should be easily achieved. So it means I get to learn all the media side of science that I’ve been interested in, which I’m really happy about.

I’ve got almost 1.5 years before the course starts, so I already know some of what I’m going to use that time for, but I also need to find some new things to do. There are quite a few skills included in the course (such as video editing for the video module, and stronger scientific writing for the science writing module) that I also need to develop before I start the course, so I’m going to have some fun learning these 🙂

Dissertation Update- April Pt. 2

24 April 2014 /

I’ve finished! 😛 8713 words, 46 pages, and a 16-hour session in the library last night/ this morning later, everything is submitted and complete.

I normally like writing essays, but by the end of yesterday I was so glad to be done- trying to judge exactly what I should keep in, what should be taken out, and what was needed for good marks was pretty difficult. The most difficult part was getting started with the press release, as including a press release was a new criteria for our year, so no-one was really clear exactly how to write it or what was needed. Once I’d actually managed to get it started, momentum took over which meant I got it finished in about an hour.

Now just to hope it was the right kind of style- as it was the first non-academic-styled piece of work we’ve been assigned, it was hard to tell whether I’d been appropriately non-academic, or gone too far the other and made it too simplistic. Having said that, it was quite fun apart from the uncertainty, and its the kind of skill I’ll definitely need for the Master’s course I want to do, so doing a few more of those would be very useful.

Finishing the dissertation means I have three exams left next month, then that’s it for being an undergraduate- that seems like it has gone by way too quickly. It almost feels like this was my first year instead of my third, and I know I’m going to miss the uni atmosphere that I only managed to really find this year. It’s a weird feeling which I don’t know quite how to put into words yet.

Dissertation Update- April

7 April 2014 /

The biggest news this month is that I’m almost finished ! After not really having any contact with my supervisor since December, I got an email a few weeks ago asking me to check in with her and say when my finished draft would be handed in… cue panic.

However, I got my first draft finished yesterday, and emailed it to my supervisor straight away…just as well, given that my laptop packed up and stopped working a few hours later.

In all the laptop-repairing drama, I almost missed getting my supervisors response.

But I’m glad to say that she liked it, and especially happy that she thought my writing was good. The only issues were in how the different parts of the introduction didn’t quite fit together (my last-minute rearranging of the introduction obviously didn’t go to plan), and that I mixed up some things like using a term in the paragraph before I defined the term. So hopefully the editing process to make it better won’t take too long. Also, she gave me the good news that some of my correlations were more significant than I thought, which means I got more interesting findings… That can only be a good thing.

So, with two weeks to go until the deadline, I’m surprisingly on track. Things are looking up 😛

Road Trip to Exeter University

24 March 2014 /

Today, I went to the British Psychological Society Undergraduate Conference up at Exeter university. It was a brilliant day, and some of the best fun I’ve had in an academic setting. Here’s a look at what we got up to, and the talks we saw.

We began our road trip in Bristol at 6:30, and arrived in Exeter at about 8:30am (after a detour for coffee). Our first reaction was mild university envy over the design and looks of the campus buildings. The main building containing their student services was equally impressive — however, I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to see the library, as I can imagine wanting to spend hours in there if I saw inside.

The main body of the day was made up of student presentations, where courageous third-year students presented their dissertation research and findings to us.

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Eye-Tracking Research Project

7 March 2014 /

For my Methods in Neuroscience Research module, we were all tasked with making a mini-dissertation. This involved us getting into groups, making and analysing an experiment as a group, then writing it up. I thought I would show you a little bit of what we got up to in the last few weeks.

So, as you can tell from the title, our experiment was using eye-tracking. Seeing as unless you’re a psychology student you probably won’t ever get to see one of these, I thought I would document it.

Firstly, here’s some pictures of the eye-tracking lab setup. On the left is the participant computer: the metal frame is for their head , and the plastic is for their chin. The computer is running software called GazeTracker, which can track people’s eye responses to pictures and even track their responses inside some software programs.This means it can also be used for user interface data.

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