The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data, courtesy of Redditor fevaah , showing old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't). If this idea was help...
Jennifer Raff is a geneticist, professor, and enthusiastic blogger. She created a helpful guide for how non-scientists (like our students) can best approach and make sense of research articles.
The original article is very detailed and explains how to make sense of experts. Personally, I appreciate that this guide is born out of trying to debate non-scientists about research. She wants everyone to benefit from science and make informed decisions based on research. I think that is great.
I think this would be an excellent way to introduce your undergraduates to research articles in the classroom.
I especially appreciated this summary of her steps (see below). This could be turned into a worksheet with ease. Note: I still think your students should chew on the full article before they are ready to answer these eleven questions.
If you are looking for a more psychology-specific guide for reading the research, I also love this perennially popular piece by Jordan and Zanna. It may be entitled "How to read an article in social psychology," but it is an excellent guide to reading research in any psychology discipline. I teach two research-reading heavy psychology electives (Positive and Motivation and Emotion). I assign this article, and a quiz about this article, during the first week of both classes.
Does anyone else have any other suggestions for guides to reading research? Lemme know, and I'll add them to this post.
The original article is very detailed and explains how to make sense of experts. Personally, I appreciate that this guide is born out of trying to debate non-scientists about research. She wants everyone to benefit from science and make informed decisions based on research. I think that is great.
I think this would be an excellent way to introduce your undergraduates to research articles in the classroom.
I especially appreciated this summary of her steps (see below). This could be turned into a worksheet with ease. Note: I still think your students should chew on the full article before they are ready to answer these eleven questions.
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| http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/09/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-a-guide-for-non-scientists/#author |
If you are looking for a more psychology-specific guide for reading the research, I also love this perennially popular piece by Jordan and Zanna. It may be entitled "How to read an article in social psychology," but it is an excellent guide to reading research in any psychology discipline. I teach two research-reading heavy psychology electives (Positive and Motivation and Emotion). I assign this article, and a quiz about this article, during the first week of both classes.
Does anyone else have any other suggestions for guides to reading research? Lemme know, and I'll add them to this post.