PREP - Module 6.2

Using software to analyze data

There are many software programs including SPSS, JASP, R, and Excel. Each of these programs has its own benefits and costs. Some programs are free, while others cost money. In most cases, your university will provide free access for students to one or more of these programs, usually the program that is taught in their statistics courses. For all of these programs, there are numerous free resources available on how to use the program, so that if you are motivated, you could teach yourself how to use a new program. For example, if you are an undergraduate in a research lab and your professor asks you to run a t-test using excel or SPSS, you can find several videos on YouTube demonstrating how to do this test. Of course, it is always a good idea to double-check with your professor or more senior lab members that you conducted the statistical test correctly until you feel comfortable analyzing data on your own. Here are some links to more information about each of the software programs:

SPSS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPyOJ8tFcI&t=720s

JASP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APRaBFC2lEQ

R: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWxoJqTqo08

Excel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbJcJCkBcMg

Finding participants and giving them participation credit

Before the widespread use of technology and the internet, researchers found participants for their research studies by posting flyers on campus with a sign-up sheet listing appointment times. When undergraduate students are the participants in research studies, they often earn course credit for participating. This means that the researchers had to track which students participated in their studies and report that information to the instructors of those students. This long, tedious, and inefficient process has mostly been replaced by software programs. Most psychology researchers rely on a program called SONA. SONA allows researchers to post sign-up sheets for their studies using an online platform. Students at participating universities login to this website and sign up for research studies there. SONA will even allow researchers to post what criteria are needed to participate. For example, some researchers are interested in the experiences of military veterans, so they will add the criteria that participants must be military veterans to sign up for the study. In some cases, students will use the program to sign up for a study that meets at a specific time, day, and location on campus. In other cases, a student may sign up for an online study and then receive a link directly to an online survey. The SONA program can also track when students participate in research so their instructors can easily know how much participation credit to award each student. Typically, professors will set up these studies on SONA and select the appropriate settings; however, as students gain experience in a research lab, they may be asked to complete these tasks or award credit to students who have completed a given task.

For a brief overview of SONA, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aezbz3UCVP8

For a longer tutorial, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8S3xfO-a8

Collecting Data

As mentioned previously, there are many methods to collect data in psychology. These methods can range from collecting saliva samples, observing two people interact and tallying their behaviors on a clipboard, or having someone complete a survey. One of the fastest and most efficient methods of data collection is using a survey. Note: Survey methods cannot be used to answer every research question, but when possible, surveys are an efficient method of data collection. Although surveys can utilize paper and pencil materials and be given in person or via mail, by far, the most common method today is to have participants complete a survey online. Online surveys are popular because they can be completed by anyone with a digital device, anywhere, anytime. This means saving time and money on materials (i.e., hours of interacting with people, papers, and pencils) and more importantly, being able to survey many people at once. For example, a survey link could be sent to every student at a university.

Qualtrics is a software program used by many universities and psychology researchers. This program allows researchers to enter their questions, psychological measures, prompts, and stimuli and then arrange the material in format they want research participants to view it. For example, the order that participants view some questions can be randomized across participants. This can be an important aspect of ensuring the validity of some research designs. When participants complete the survey, their responses are visible in a format that looks very much like excel. The responses can be exported to many different file types where they can be analyzed with the statistics software programs that were mentioned above. As an undergraduate student researcher, you may be asked to create and format surveys in Qualtrics or maybe download data from Qualtrics before beginning analysis. You can learn more about Qualtrics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQsazNbb9Ic

Finding Previous Research

Another task you might work on as a research assistant is finding previous research related to a current or future research question. Before researchers design and carry out their own research, they look at past research to see what other researchers have already found and what methods were used in those past research studies. In some cases, you might plan to replicate (or repeat) previous research but in slightly different ways. In other cases, you might want to use the same measure in your own study that is on a different topic. In either case, you need to search for previous research. This used to take the form of spending hours in a library looking through shelves of published research. Most research journals used to publish what looked like magazines you might see at the grocery store, except they were full of research articles. Thankfully, these days, there are online search tools to help find articles, most of which are in digital PDF format!