Some Tips about Oral JC Presentations

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2. Do not select a really poor article and then spend your time telling us how bad it is.
Be sure to check  the link to articles to see relevant journls for this course.

3. Do not spend your time reading from the article itself --OK to use your notes,
but don't engage in long readings.

4. If the study has many conditions, measures, groups, try to group things and
report on the groupings, not each and every individual measure.
       E.g., "Authors used many self-report measures of marital satisfaction, including
                 the well known DAS."
               "A behavioral coding system was used to measure withdrawal."

5. You DO NOT need to go into detail on the statistical analyses. DO indicate
whether we  are talking about correlations or tests of mean differences.

6. If the study is comparing measures of satisfaction, for example, there really
isn't an IV and DV; it is not an experimental design, so don't look for one!
IF it is comparing treatments to a control group then it is an experimental design.

Remember, you are speaking to your peers and they do not know the study
as well as you do.     Help them understand the study; focus on them, not on
you, when you speak.

  Avoid speech mannerisms, like "like", "whatever," "or something." These
are like speech stammers and they get annoying.

     Bad example: "Like these authors... like they were trying to measure satisfaction
                              or something, and like they used a bunch of tests or whatever..."

Try to answer questions simply. Remember, you are aware of nuances that the
audience is not aware of (having not read the article!). Answer at the level of the
question; don't get into thenitty-gritty of the method if you can't do it orally and
clearly, or if findings are complicated ("The wives were different on Tuesday if
the moon was just right and the phone was ringing). Some studies just have so
many qualifications that a simple oral report is not possible. Don't
get trapped in such a maze.

Use the blackboard to help illustrate a research design that is complex.
Show what the time line is in a longitudinal study. Use schematic diagrams
(or symbols) to define conditions, if necessary.

This might be an example from a longitudinal study:
 

 
 

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