Factorial ANOVA example ahead! With a lovely interaction. And I have a year old and a 4.5 year old and they are sickly daycare kids, so this example really spoke to me. NPR did a story about a recent publication that studied how we administer medicine to our kids and provides evidence for a few things I've suspected: Measuring cups for kid medicine are a disaster AND syringes allow for more accurate dosing, especially if the dose is small. The researchers wanted to know if parents properly dosed liquid medicine for their kids. The researchers used a 3 (dosage, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 ml) x 3 (modality: small syringe, big syringe, medicine cup) design. They didn't use factorial ANOVA in their analysis, this example can still be used to conceptually explain factorial ANOVA. Their findings: How to use in class: -An easy-to-follow conceptual example of factorial ANOVA (again, they didn't use that analysis in the original paper, but the table above illustrates factorial ANO...

Dr. Kevin McIntryre from Trinity University has created the Open Stats Lab.  OSL provides users with research articles, data sets, and worksheets for studies that illustrate statistical tests commonly taught in Introduction to Statistics. Topics covered, illustrated beautifully by Natalie Perez All of his examples come from Open Science Framework-compliant publications from Psychological Science. McIntyre presents the OSF data (in SPSS, R, and .  CSV files are available ), the original research article, AND a worksheet to accompany each article. Layout for each article/data set/activity. This article demonstrates one-way ANOVA. I know. It can be challenging to find 1) research an UG can follow that 2) contains simple data analyses. And here, McIntryre presents it all. This project was funded by a grant from APS.

This story describes a 1966 journal article that argues that signing an informed consent isn't the same as truly giving informed consent. I think this is a good example for the ethics section of a research methods class as it demonstrates some deeply unethical situations in which participants weren't able to give informed consent (prisoners, non-English speakers, etc.). Indeed, the context within which the informed consent is provided is very important. It also provides a historical context regarding the creation of Institutional Review Boards. The original 1966 article is here .

I am teaching positive psychology for the first time this semester. One way to quickly teach students that this isn't just Happy Psych. 101 is to show them convincing data collected by an international organization (here, the United Nations) that demonstrates the link between positive psychology and the well-being of nations. This data isn't just for a positive psychology class: You could also use it more broadly to demonstrate how research methods have to be adjusted when data is collected internationally (see item 4) and as examples of different kinds of data analysis (as described under item 1). 1) Report on international happiness data from the United Nations . If you look through the data collected, there is a survival analysis related to longevity and affect on page 66. A graphic on page 21 describes factors that account for global variance in happiness levels across countries. There is also a lot of data about mental health care spending in different nations. 2 ...

I like the following examples because they are accessible, potentially life-saving, and demonstrate statistics that disprove convention (and saves lives!), and provide a good argument for program evaluation. For decades, prevailing wisdom stated that we should put babies to sleep on their stomachs so that they wouldn't choke on their own spit-up in their sleep. Then, lo-and-behold, data suggested that putting babies to sleep on their back reduced deaths due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). BY HALF. Data disproved convention AND improved public health dramatically and cheaply as the American Academy of Pediatrics rolled out the Back To Sleep campaign to inform parents about this research and best practices for bedtime. Now, the law of unintended consequences: Wee little babies are developing flat heads! My own son did (he is the cutie in the helmet), and required a helmet and physical therapy to correct the condition. More on the flat head (technical name: plagioenc...

University of Cambridge's Psychometric Center has used statistics to make make personality predictions based upon an individual's Facebook "likes" . For instance, your likes can be used to create your Big Five personality trait profile. Your students can have their data FB "likes" analyzed at YouAreWhatYouLike.com  as to determine their Big Five traits. After your students complete the FB version of the scale, you could have your students complete a more traditional paper and pencil version of the inventory and discuss differences/similarities/concurrent validity between the two measures. Below, I've included a screen grab of my FB-derived Big Five rating from YouAreWhatYouLike.com. Note: Yes, that is how I score on more traditional versions of the same scale. Generated at YouAreWhatYouLike.com In addition to Big Five prediction, the researchers also used the "like" data to make predictions of other qualities, like sexual orientatio...

I originally came across this story via io9.com . More information from the source is available here . Essential, these high-end German shoes are made by a company of devoted atheists. They even have their mailing materials branded with "atheist". And they had a problem with their packages being lost in by the USPS. They ran a wee experiment in which they sent out packages that were labeled with the Atheist tape vs. not, and found that the Atheist packages went missing at a statistically higher rate than the non-denominational packages. I think this could be used in the classroom because it is a pretty straight-forward research design, you can challenge your students to question the research design, simply challenge your students to read through the discussion of this article at the atheistberlin website, introduce your students to Milgram's "lost letter" technique and other novel research methods. Edit: 3/9/2020 If you want to delve further into...

A chocolate study seems very appropriate for the day after Easter. Messerli's study found a strong and positive correlation between a nation's per capita chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel prizes won by that nation (see graph below). The research article is a pretty straight forward: The only statistical analysis conducted was a correlation, the journal article is very short, and it used archival data. As such, you can use this example to illustrate correlation and archival data as well as the dread "third variable" problem (by asking students to generate variables that may increase chocolate consumption as well as top-notch research/writing/peace/etc.). Property of Messerli/New England Journal of Medicine

Darryl Bem on The Colbert Report I love me some Colbert Report. So imagine my delight when he interviewed social psychologist Darryl Bem . Bem is famous for his sex roles inventory as well as his Psi research. Colbert interviewed him about his 2012 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect, which demonstrated a better-than-chance ability to predict an outcome. Here, the outcome was guessing which side of a computer screen would contain an erotic image (Yes, Colbert had a field day with this. Yes, please watch the clip in its entirety before sharing it with a classroom of impressionable college students). Big deal? Needless to say, Colbert reveled in poking fun at the "Time Traveling Porn" research. However, the interview is of some educational value because it a)does a good job of describing the research methods used in the study. Additionally, b) h...