Research Methods

Research Articles on Happiness Homework

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NOTE: This page is meant to be printed out for your convenience when you work on your homework. It contains the same information as on the main page for the course.

Homework: (18 pts) You are going to find and read about two research articles on depression. You may rely on the abstracts if they give you as much information as you need. After you find the articles, you need to say what they were about and to discuss why the investigators used different methodologies. Please complete the homework and email it to me as an attachment. The two articles must come from two different areas of psychology (eg., social, clinical, developmental, neuroscience, or others).

Purpose of the Homework: This assignment is designed to show you how different approaches lead to different kinds of questions and perspectives. Various researchers may be interested in the same general topic, but because of the way they have been trained, their approaches differ. This relates, in a way, to the idea that if the only tool you have is a hammer, you begin to see everything as a nail. That is, once you develop an approach to research, you tend to stick with it, so you see every question within that single perspective.

This assignment will also give you some practice dealing with PsycInfo to find research relevant to your interests.

What you need to do to complete the homework successfully: When you find the research articles, you need to read and understand them so you can explain clearly why the researchers did the study, how they conducted the project, and what they concluded. When you write your answers, make sure they are in plain, coherent English. Avoid the use of jargon or technical language if you don't need to use it.

• State the major hypotheses. There may be one or two main hypotheses and several less important ones. Identify only the major questions the researchers are addressing. (1 pt for each article)
• Summarize their methodology, identifying participant characteristics, materials used in the study (2 pts for each article)
• In clear English, encapsulate the results--what did the researchers find (2 pts for each article)
• Identify the conclusions the researchers drew. (2 pts for each article)

For the integrative questions

• Say why different types of research questions require different methodologies. (2 pts)
• Tell why it is a beneficial that different researchers adopt different methodologies even for the same topic. (2 pts)

• Include a References page with the two articles cited in APA-style. (2 pts)

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