EPTOn June 04 2010 06:17 punkideas wrote:
As an aspiring research psychologist (~2 months from my MA), I wonder what the effect size is for that. Also, if the people who participated were in a specific psychology class (such as developmental) that would almost certainly bias the sample. I'm guessing the measure used was the BDI (pretty much the standard). Personally, I wouldn't take these results as meaningful until this was replicated on a more general sample, such as intro psych students (research has shown they're good enough for stuff like this). Also, group size factors could play into this. If the sample was 30 and only a few people fell into one category, you can't make any real conclusions. Finally, trying to attribute causation is pretty much pointless without having more data. Constructing testable models of causality are not a trivial task. If you can link to the paper (or even better, the dataset), I would love to take a look at it.
Don't take this post the wrong way, it sounds like this was a well done study for undergraduate research. I'm more trying to explain some of the shortcomings to people not familiar with psychological research.
As an aspiring research psychologist (~2 months from my MA), I wonder what the effect size is for that. Also, if the people who participated were in a specific psychology class (such as developmental) that would almost certainly bias the sample. I'm guessing the measure used was the BDI (pretty much the standard). Personally, I wouldn't take these results as meaningful until this was replicated on a more general sample, such as intro psych students (research has shown they're good enough for stuff like this). Also, group size factors could play into this. If the sample was 30 and only a few people fell into one category, you can't make any real conclusions. Finally, trying to attribute causation is pretty much pointless without having more data. Constructing testable models of causality are not a trivial task. If you can link to the paper (or even better, the dataset), I would love to take a look at it.
Don't take this post the wrong way, it sounds like this was a well done study for undergraduate research. I'm more trying to explain some of the shortcomings to people not familiar with psychological research.
He is well aware of most of these things, it's the stuff learned in methodology classes.
I'll try to ask him for the data, if I get them I'll give you a look.
