Summary Week 12

We have completed the second quarter of the lab! This week we had our last lab conference call for the quarter. During the call our goal was to come to a resolution on the subject of the article that we are to write in the final quarter of the lab. During the previous week students proposed various topics for the paper, but most were not consistent with the data that we had available. During the call the faculty laid out the data we had available and discussed various scenarios, we came to the realization that the best solution was to go with the topic of the student poster: Physician relationships in the oldest old.

We took a new approach to making the decision, which has gotten a number of positive comments from students – we basically discussed the issues as we would in a face to face lab, and reached consensus on the topic. The students had the opportunity to hear how the faculty went about making the decision, and the issues that we felt were important.

I have collected all of the research surveys from both the lab and control students which showed a significant pattern of learning and an increase in self-efficacy in the lab students. The control students’ scores stayed at about the same level. So we have clearly shown that being in a lab increases research knowledge and research confidence over a non-applied curriculum.

We will have a week break now and be back to the lab the first week of December

Lee Stadtlander

Time for a break

Our lab is wrapping up week 12 of the quarter and we had our last lab meeting conference call for fall quarter last night. In it, we finalized our article topic (I am sure Dr. Stadtlander will elaborate on that).

It is exciting to see our work come to conclusion in this way - if not a conclusion exactly, we have certainly crossed a major milestone in deciding upon the article's focus. Next quarter, we will be working on sewing the article together with the help of all of our student researchers.

As this break coincides with Thanksgiving - it is a great time for folks to unplug and recharge so as to gear up for a strong winter quarter pace with the article.

I think Instructors appreciate the break as much as do students - it is in my humble opinion, vital in order to recharge.

AES

Summary Week 11

This week we asked students to think about topics for our paper that we will write next quarter. They have had many ideas, although we do not have enough data to use many of them for a professional article. Still, it is good to have them consider the issues.

We found this week that our posters have been accepted for Walden’s winter research symposium in Miami. The students were very excited to hear that their poster will be presented. The faculty were also asked to have a breakout session during the faculty meeting on training faculty on how to develop virtual labs.

I want to emphasize that it is very important to get your research out to the professional field. It does no good to anyone to keep your results and knowledge in a file drawer. It needs to be shared. We are trying to publicize the idea of conducting virtual labs – this is not a fad, but a viable method of collecting data and training students. We have shown the feasibility of it over multiple quarters and projects. We have demonstrated and collected data showing that students learn more by applying their knowledge in a real research project. The other benefit that is apparent, but hard to capture is the excitement and enthusiasm for research that has grown in the students. As they see how research is conducted and are assured that they can do it, their confidence has built. I particularly enjoying seeing the connections they make in the literature and suggestions for future research possibilities. It is the creative aspect that makes it enjoyable for the researcher (and for the instructor).

Lee Stadtlander

Working towards the article...

As Dr. Giles notes, we now have *lots* of data and at this point, there is always the risk of letting that wonderful fact (better than having too little data, right?) overwhelm the article formation process.

As Sternberg (2000) writes:

"There are two possible articles you can write: (a) the article you planned to write when you designed your study or (b) the article that makes the most sense now that you have seen the results. They are rarely the same; and the correct answer is (b)." (p. 4)

So our task is to find what makes the most sense and if we are lucky it will overlap with what we set out to do. As we sift through the data, it is also important to keep in mind where the data contribute most with regard to the existing literature and the existing gaps in that literature. This part of the process can be hard for students because not only does it require assimilating considerable and complex data but also because it requires that we mentally go back to the literature a bit to see where our work helps to fill a gap. Students are starting to post suggestions, based on our data and based on the literature in our lab this week – which is exciting because we start to see the end ‘product’ if you will but also because it requires that students think critically, take a risk and put their ideas out there. As an instructor, this is a very rewarding part of the process!

AES



Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.). (2000). Guide to Publishing in Psychology Journals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

more thoughts

So much data... now what?  We are narrowing in on a topic with which to write a journal article.  It seemed like such an easy task at first: just pick something and write about it.  But as we get further into it, it is not as easy as it sounded.  We have so much data and we need to look at topics that incorporate both qualitative and quantitative data.  I think it is hard for the students to see how one piece of information informs the other.  Do the results from the heath efficacy scale inform the interview questions, or do the interview questions inform the results from the scale.  Do we match the results of the LoC with specific examples from the respondent or general interview results from all?  Do we just look at the demographic info and say that informs the interviews?  Do we analyze everything and then pick something that showed the most significance?  What do we do about the things we have found that may be significant but were not part of our original research questions?  And what about outliers, do we even mention them?

I think these tasks are much like the tasks every student must work through in the dissertation process.  What to include, what to exclude, what is important and what is not.  All the while, maintaining ones ethical obligations and scholarly work.  Not an easy task.  If one keeps in mind that they are adding to the body of literature and not attempting to prove their own hypothesis, I think it becomes easier.  Write about what actually transpired and what can be backed up by the data collected.  Remembering that data must be stored for at least 5 years after the completion of the study ( not for participant security, but to provide the raw data should someone questions your results).

So what will we write on?  That will be up to the students to decide once they look at all thee data and decide which pieces inform which other pieces and fill a gap..... Wish us luck :)

M. Giles

Summary Week 10

This week students have been exploring their choice of interview questions in the transcripts and looking for themes. They have discovered a number of themes, such as participants’ desire for their doctor to like them, and doctors do not appear to discuss typical age related changes with their patients. This is particularly interesting when you consider that many doctors blamed the person’s symptoms on age.

We had a lab conference call this week; one thing that became clear is that the online environment does not appear to be conducive to students’ asking vague questions. The students stated that they feel that they must have a specific question in mind in the classroom, and when they are not sure exactly what to ask they hesitate to post it. The faculty have been very open to questions in the lab, so this is an interesting revelation. Students in the meeting asked about basic issues such as what is the difference between a code and a theme. Yet, they had hesitated to address the issue in class. I have to wonder, what is it about writing out the question in class that feels more threatening? Perhaps in person they are more aware of others also not knowing the answer?

Again, I have come to realize the importance of having regular lab conference calls, where we all have the opportunity to share information and questions. We only have two more weeks of the quarter remaining, next quarter we begin writing up all our data for a possible journal article. I think the conference calls will be even more important next quarter, to make sure that we are all on the same page during the writing process.

 Lee Stadtlander

Summary – Week 9

This week we asked students to read through several full transcripts and consider what they learned that was different from the experience of doing the interview in person. Many students mentioned that they wished that they had slowed down and focused more on the interviewee’s responses. They felt that they often cut off something he or she was going to say. It is so important, particularly when interviewing older people to give them time to reflect on the question and think about it. Silence is often uncomfortable for the interviewer, but necessary. Several students do employment interviewing in their everyday job and indicated how different research interviewing is from it. In research interviewing you must focus on several things at one time: making sure they answered question, getting ready to ask the next question, being aware that someone else is going to hear the interview recording, and try to appreciate what the person is saying.

Some students commented that the sheer volume of data felt overwhelming. A half hour interview can often generate 20-25 single spaced spaces. Multiplied by our 35 participants, that is a great deal of information to process! Some interesting insights came from the students’ review of the transcripts: “many participants had lost their original physician to retirement or death, and had to find someone new.” Which is yet another loss for the oldest old. “Several participants mentioned that they take their aches and pains as just part of the aging process.” “Some women indicated that they no longer do GYN exams or mammograms.” We discussed that we wished we had followed up on these comments and gotten more information on why this is a case. As with all research this project is leading to more questions for future studies.

We finalized the two posters we will be submitting on the project for Walden’s Winter Research Symposium in Miami in January. The students seemed to have learned a lot from doing the poster and thinking about the project as a whole and how the pieces interconnect.

Lee Stadtlander

Research is sometimes quite unnatural in today's world

Lately, I have been doing a lot of data work in SPSS. As I get bogged down in the details of the data set, I realize how hard it is for me to pull myself out of it when I have to leave the work for other obligations. Similarly, it takes considerable effort at times, to hurl myself into this part of the work as I know it to be detailed and labor intensive.

It strikes me that such detailed work is a bit unnatural in our increasingly instantaneous lives. We tend to expect things to happen quickly and with relatively little effort. Our ability to communicate almost instantly with anyone anywhere in the world is one example.

In social psychology, there are what we call judgmental heuristics which basically represent mental shortcuts we take to save ourselves some effort, energy, resources, etc... We tend to make judgments: based on how readily we can pull up pertinent examples (availability heuristic); how similar an unknown object may be to a known entity (representativeness heuristic); and we seem to pay considerable attention to our attitudes over knowledge or facts (attitude heuristic) (Anderson, 2008).

All of this for me highlights the need to make time, space, and effort for focused work such as what needs to be done in research. In a world increasingly dependent upon technological advances making our daily lives infinitely quicker than they were even last year - this can be hard to do. In support of this is a recent article I found in Linkedin News and , titled 'Four Destructive Myths most Companies Still Live By' by Tony Schwartz.

http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=881785693&ids=0MdPwSc3AQe3wIcPASdjwTcjwUb3gOej8PcjATe2MMcjkMcjsUdPwIcPgSej4UdPsU&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-68&ut=1k_OU91mKbP4Y1

The first myth Schwartz presents is Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand. This is a by product of a variety of factors, no doubt but due in part to our increased ability to have instant results and to physically do many things at once - if not well.

Research is a kind of critical thinking which by its nature, requires that we slow down and think well and I find myself feeling increasingly protective of it. I hope this is something our students, too, can appreciate.

AES

Anderson, E.A. (2008). The Social Animal. (10th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

thoughts

I have been thinking a lot about the ethical issues inherent in research. I believe that most students, and hopefully, all researchers know about protecting subjects. Subjects involved in studies must be informed of the purpose, length, requirements and all parts of a study prior to consenting to be in the study. This is informed consent, and protects both the participant and the researcher. Of course, there are other considerations: humane treatment, avoidance of deception, no coercion, etc. But all of these issues relate to the study participants.

I wonder how much students really look at the ethics involved in data collection. If someone marks two numbers on the same line of a survey, if they skip a question, if they do a task after the due date..... can that data be used? The simple answer is no. Of course if the survey allows for skipped questions, the researcher can simply throw out the skipped question or omit the double answer. If the response is time sensitive and results come in late, that data cannot be used. What if one of the subjects decides at the last minute that he/she does not want his/her data used? It must be thrown out even if the analysis has been completed.

I believe that student researchers sometimes forget that informed consent allows the individual to pull out of the study at any time. That really does not happen, to my knowledge, but I wonder if students think about what they would do if it did happen. I wonder if they think about what they would do if surveys that were time sensitive were submitted late? What would they do if half a survey was left incomplete?


We spend a great deal of time talking about the ethics involved in human research, but not as much about what happens once the consent form has been signed. I am wondering if more time should be spent with students talking about the ethics involved with data collection, analysis, and what can be said in a discussion of the results..... Just my thoughts...