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 the
nitty-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:
Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4
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