Applied Research Methods (ARM): Planning & Designing Research

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Conceive and design research in clinical, educational or health settings
• Critique published research reports
• Conduct ethical research
• Identify relevant research questions and generate testable hypotheses
• Begin to design effective research studies
• Explain and apply the principles of sampling, statistical power, confidence interval, effect size, and measurement error

· Philosophical underpinnings of research, research questions and hypotheses, & mixed methods

· Ethics and Governances

· Data preparation, power and effect size.

· Clinically significant / statistically significant change & case studies and single sample studies

· Clinical trials and interventions

· Systematic reviews - the literature search process

Teaching and learning methods

This is a 10 CATS (5 ECTS) module, which translates into a total study time of 100 hours. These 100 hours are split into 18 teaching hours and 82 hours of independent study. Teaching will consist of six three hour long workshop sessions. During teaching sessions a variety of teaching and learning methods will be used including lecture presentations; group work (for example role play of an ethics committee, assessing research questions and forming hypotheses, discussing study designs), using a computer to conduct literature searches and calculations. Opportunities for formative assessment and feedback are built into the module in the form of in-class teaching and learning activities and blended learning resources. Staff provide verbal feedback during these activities to help you gauge and develop your knowledge and understanding. Test-yourself multiple choice questions (with automated feedback/answers) are available on Blackboard so that you can evaluate your own knowledge and understanding.

Resources & Reading list

Journal Articles

Jacobson, N. S. & Truax, P. (1991). Clinical significance: a statistical approach to defining meaningful change in psychotherapy research.". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59(1), pp. pg.12-19.

Bauer, R.M. (2007). Evidence-based practice in psychology: Implications for research and research training. Journal of clinical psychology, 63(7), pp. 685-694.

Textbooks

Morley, S. (2018). Single-case methods in clinical psychology. Routledge.

American Psychological Association (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Field, A. (2018). Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics. London: Sage.

Barker, C. Pistrang, N. & Elliott, R. (2015). Research Methods in Clinical Psychology: Anintroduction for Students and Practitioners. Sussex: Wiley.

British Psychological Society (2014). BPS Code of Human Research Ethics.

Thomas, G. (2011). How to do your research project. Sage.

Marks, D. F. & Yardley, L (2004). Research methods for clinical and health psychology. London: Sage.

Assessment strategy

The coursework assessment for the module will take the form of short-answer questions about a psychology research article. Students will be provided with a journal article and a series of questions designed to assess their ability to understand and evaluate the evidence presented within the article, draw inferences from the article, and apply these to the planning and designing of psychological research.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External