Abstract
Activities that Engage Students in Research Methods
William M. Trochim
The undergraduate research methods course in psychology that is typically required can be challenging
for both the students and instructor. This workshop provides both a brief theoretical introduction and
practical activities designed to address two key aspects of a research methods course that are at the
heart of the challenge. First is the challenge of how to get students engaged with the content. To
address this, attendees will be introduced to the idea of active learning approaches to research
methods, such as the use of role-playing approaches and the development of “teachable tidbits” or
modularized components. Workshop participants will be shown how to construct role-playing scripts
that enable teams of students to act out an entire applied research project from conceptualization to
methods development to analysis and write-up. In addition, they will be introduced to active learning
approaches that draw on the theory and practice developed at the Yale University Center for Scientific
Teaching and implemented through the National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate
Education. Second is the challenge of how to encourage students to develop critical research thinking
skills that go beyond the understanding of collections of sampling, measurement and research design
techniques. Attendees will be introduced to the seldom-recognized foundational idea of Donald T.
Campbell’s theory of validity in research – evolutionary epistemology – and will be shown practical ways
to introduce validity reasoning in a research methods course. The key to this approach is the
development of a central proposition or hypothesis, the generation of multiple alternative explanations
that get put into competition with it, and techniques for “ruling out” the most plausible alternatives.
Students who grasp the idea of validity reasoning will be better prepared to adapt research to the
inevitable contingencies of real world complexity.