The Psychology Research Companion : From Student Project to Working Life

__The Psychology Research Companion: From student project to working life__ not only gives you the skills and confidence to conduct your psychology research project at university, but is the first book to show how these skills will help you get ahead in your first job in the workplace. Jessica S. Horst, an American psychologist teaching in the UK, takes you through every step of the research process; from conceiving your research question and choosing a research methodology, to organizing your time and resources effectively. The book includes sections on ethics, data management, working with research participants and report writing, but each chapter is also informed by the wider aim of providing a toolkit for working life. Each chapter is packed with tips and skills that can be taken into the workplace, including working collaboratively and organising your workload, as well as discussing your research project in interview situations and when applying for jobs. This invaluable guide will appeal to all undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students whose aim is to learn a set of transferable research skills as well as to obtain a good degree result. Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of figures 14 List of tables 16 Acknowledgements 18 1 Introduction and starting out 20 This is a book about transferable skills 20 Structure of the book 22 Pick and choose 24 Choosing a supervisor and mentor 24 Choosing a topic 26 Feasibility 28 Research with other populations 29 Ethical approval 31 Science is collaborative: working with other people 33 The golden rule 33 Handling conflicts 34 Preventing conflicts 34 When conflict is unavoidable 34 Dissertation checklist 36 Before you officially start (e.g. the spring before) 36 When you officially start 37 Data collection phase 38 Post-data collection phase 38 Primary writing phase 38 Methods 38 Results 39 Introduction 39 Discussion 39 Final steps 39 Polishing 40 Turning it in 40 Presentation 40 Recommended readings 40 References 41 2 All in a day’s work 43 Creating a “paper trail” or lab notebook 43 Finding references 45 General searching 45 What to do when you don’t have access 47 Forward searching 48 A good many journal articles (organization) 48 Organizing journal articles 49 Keeping track of all the findings 50 Finding participants 52 Fliers 52 Canvassing individuals 52 Snowballing 53 Team up 53 How to write an email that gets answered 54 Make it easy 55 Make it short 56 Make it legit 56 Mail merge: among the most useful transferable skills 58 Contacting participants by phone 59 Stimuli 64 Photographing stimuli and apparatuses 64 Measuring stimuli 65 Piloting and early stage of data collection 65 Testing off campus 68 Coding data 69 For the record 70 Hardcopy data 72 Make the data easy to collect and enter 72 Keep the data organized 75 Electronic data 75 Keep the data file organized 75 Back up the data 76 Additional good habits to start now 76 From A to Z 76 Embrace color 76 Places, everyone! 78 Finishing your project and exiting the lab 78 Transferring these skills 79 References 79 3 All in good time (management) 81 Checklists 81 Calendars 84 Setting priorities and deadlines 87 Work backwards to set deadlines 87 Order of operations 88 Getting the work done 90 Upfront work 90 Know your quadrants 91 Understand when perfectionism doesn’t matter 95 Set aside the time 96 You say pomodoro, I say tomato 97 Making the most of downtime 98 Location, location, location! 99 Give yourself a cushion 100 Know thyself 101 Insider tricks of the trade 101 Multitasking is a myth 101 Save your energy 102 Handle paper once 103 Spending less time on the phone 103 Use mnemonics to automate your checklists 104 Transferring these skills 106 References 106 4 Make your computer work for you 108 Computer organization 108 What’s in a name: naming files and folders 109 What’s in an alias 110 Word processing 110 Autocorrect is actually incredibly smart 110 Spell check is actually . . . not so smart 111 Don’t lose track: track changes 112 No comment? 113 Color-code to mark your place 115 Number crunching 117 At random 118 What if . . . 120 Sort yourself out 121 See the errors of your ways 121 Check individual scores 122 Check for outliers 122 Check for human (reading) error 122 Graph as you go 123 Copy with care 124 Replace with care 125 Pivot tables 126 Common Excel errors 127 Circular reference 127 ### 127 #DIVX/0! 127 #NUM! and #VALUE! 128 Transferring these skills 129 References 129 5 The write way 130 The sections of your dissertation 134 Method 136 Results 137 Introduction 139 Discussion 141 Abstract 142 Title 142 References 144 Appendices 145 How to write well 145 Repeat, repeat, repeat 145 Only move forward 146 Don’t make your reader work hard 147 Use parallel sentences 147 Keep the reader on the same page 147 Minimize mental arithmetic 148 Avoid unconventional abbreviations 149 Avoid generic names 150 Use the same terms throughout 150 Keep modifiers next to what they modify 150 Use short sentences 150 Keep in mind what your reader doesn’t know 150 Be concise 151 Avoid th-words 151 The: When three-letter words are bad words 152 This is so vague 152 That is a red flag 153 Avoid “empty phrases” 153 Ask yourself if you can say it in fewer words 154 Choose phrases that lower your word count 155 Use third person 155 Polishing: Little things to check at the end 157 Helpful sentence structures and phrases 158 Transferring these skills 160 References 161 6 Presenting your findings 164 Figuring out figures 164 Non-data figures 164 Raising the bar: creating data figures 168 The y-axis 169 Lines or bars or other? 172 The x-axis 174 Tables 177 The small print, i.e. captions 177 Presentations 178 Slide and content format 179 Show your true colors 179 Put up a brave font (not really) 181 Animation 181 For the audience 182 For the presenter 182 Multi-media 184 Being nervous 185 Talking about your study 187 What is your study about? 188 Do your PREP 191 Transferring your presentation skills to job interviews 191 Transferable skills 191 Transferring these skills 193 Conclusions 194 References 195 Index 196 "The Psychology Research Companion: From student project to working life not only gives you the skills and confidence to conduct your psychology research project at university, but is the first book to show how these skills will help you get ahead in your first job in the workplace. Jessica S. Horst, and American psychologist teaching in the UK, takes you through every step of the research process: from conceiving your research question and choosing a research methodology, to organizing your time and resources effectively. The book includes sections on ethics, data management, working with research participants and report writing, but each chapter is also informed by the wider aim of providing a toolkit for working life. Each chapter is packed with tips and skills that can be taken into the workplace, including working collaboratively and organising your workload, as well as discussing your research project in interview situations when applying for jobs. This invaluable guide will appeal to all undergraduate and post graduate psychology students whose aim is to learn a set of transferable research skills as well as to obtain a good degree result"--Page 4 of cover This invaluable guide gives you the skills and confidence to conduct your psychology research project at university, and provides transferable research skills to help you get ahead in your first research job after graduation.