Waitress Bella is on TikTok . She shares her beach looks and hauls, like plenty of other influencers. Recently, though, shared a series of TikToks that have a home in our statistics and research methods classes.  Bella had a hypothesis. She suspected that certain hairstyles influenced her customers to tip her more. So Bella tested her hypothesis over a series of within-subject, n = 1 experiments at work ( Bella, 2022a , Bella, 2022b , Bella, 2022c ) This isn't a pre-registered paper with open data, but I think this could be a good discussion piece in a research methods or statistics class. I swear that Kate isn't my burner account. If you really, really wanted to test this hypothesis properly, what would that research look like? 1) What external factors influence tips (day of the week, time of day, etc.)? 2) What factors influence reactions to waitstaff (gender, attractiveness, alcohol)? 3) Would you use a within or between research design to study this (different waitstaff wit...

A man after my own heart. This is of minimal educational value but maximal stats humor. David purchased a Pure Drink water bowl for his cat. He wanted to know if it actually resulted in his cat drinking more water.  This wee (hahahaha) little study could be used on the first day of class to demonstrate: 1) A hypothesis 2) Operationalized variables 3) Within-subject research design  4) p (HAHAHAHHA)-values 5) What a god damn stats nerd their instructor is 6) The power of data visualization

Okay. I know there are so many COVID examples out there, but this one is maybe a tiny bit amusing (it involves Berlin dance clubs). It also demonstrates a within-subject research design and ecological validity. It is also a very tiny example that is easy to understand and doesn't require students to understand any psychological theories. Yes, many of you are psychologists teaching statistics, but I think it is vital that we use various examples to ensure that at least one of them will stick for every student. Emma Hurt/NPR Anyway. Berlin has a famous dance club culture , which has been under tremendous financial strain due to COVID-19. Since winter is coming and outdoor options will no longer be possible, the government has sponsored a pilot project to study whether or not clubs can be opened safely if everyone at the club has tested negative for COVID-19. NPR reported on this applied, within-subject design study  (a three-minute-long news story you could use in class): In addition...

I have spent many a summer day at Rehoboth Beach, DE. The seagulls there were assholes. They would aggressively go after food, especially your bucket of Thrasher's french fries. Apparently, this is a global problem, as a group of stalwart researchers in the UK attempted to dissuade gulls from stealing french fries by staring those sons-of-a-gun down . Researchers Goumas, Burns, Kelley, and Boogert shared their data . And it makes for a nice t-test example. 1. The Method section is hilarious and true. 2. Within-subject design: Each seagull was observed in the stare down and non-staredown condition 3. Their figure is a nice example of the data visualization trend of illustrating individual data points. 4. The researchers shared their data. You can download it here . The Goumas et al. supplemental data can be used as a paired t-test example, t (18) = 3.13, p = .006, d = 0.717.

There are a lot of lessons in this one study  (Craig, Nelson, & Dixson, 2019): Within subject design, factorial ANOVA and interactions,and data is available via OSF. Let's begin: TL: DR: The original study looked and the presence or absence of beards and whether or not this affected participants' ability to decode the emotional expression on a man's face. Or, more eloquently: TL: DR: Their stimuli were pictures of the same dudes with and without beards. And those weren't just any dudes, they had been trained in the Ekman facial coding system as to make distinct expressions. Or... One participant, rating the same man in Bearded vs. Non-bearded condition, provides a clear example of within subject research design. This article also provides examples of interactions and two-way ANOVA. Here look at aggression ratings for expressing (happy v. angry) and face hairiness (clean-shaven v. beard). Look at that bearded face interaction! Bearded guy...

How much do our personalities change when we're drunk? Not as much as we think. We know this due to the self-sacrificing research participants who went to a lab, filled out some scales, got drunk with their friends. For science! Here is the research, as summarized by the first author .  Here  is the original study. This example admittedly panders to undergraduates. But I also think it is an example that will stick in their heads. It provides good examples of: 1) Self-report vs. other-report personality data in research. -Two weeks prior to the drinking portion, participants completed a Big Five personality scale as if they were drunk. So, there is the self-report of Drunk!Participant. And during the drinking session, participants had their Big Five judged by research assistants coding their interactions with friends, allowing a more object judgment of the Drunk!Participant. The findings: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/personality-may-change-whe...

Reddit user jonjiv conducted a case study in human language development. He carefully monitored his son's speaking ability, and here is what he found: https://imgur.com/gallery/KwZ6C#qLwsn9S...go to this link for a clearer picture of the chart! How to use in class: 1) Good for Developmental Psychology. Look at that naming explosion! 2) Good to demonstrate how nerdy data collection can happen in our own lives. 3) Within versus between subject design. Instead of sampling separate 10, 11, 12, etc. month old children, we have real-time data collected from one child. AND this isn't retrospective data, either. 4) Jonjiv even briefly describes his "research methodology" in the original post. The word had to be used in a contextually appropriate manner AND observed by both him and his wife (inter-rater reliability!). He also stored his data in a Google sheet because of convenience/ease of tracking via cell phone.