East Carolina University
Department of Psychology
PSYC 2101: Earning Extra Credit
Through Research Participation
You may earn up to three points of extra credit, added to your final P score at the
end of the semester, by participating in approved research in the Department of
Psychology. Three points is almost a third of a letter grade, so this could really help get
over the threshold for that grade you want.
The first step towards earning these extra credits is to register in the Sona
System, which is used to track research participation in our department. Go to my page
Using Psychology's Research Participation System. Follow the instructions in my Short
Tutorial, which covers the basics of getting registered in the system, signing up for
studies, etc. Most of my help files are designed for students in PSYC 1000, but may be
of some help to you too. Do note that you will not receive credit for participating the
start of semester or end of semester surveys, as these are for the exclusive use of
students in PSYC 1000.
There are two ways that you can earn these credits:
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Participation in approved research earns one credit for each hour of participation.
Reading an approved research article and passing a quiz on its content and
posting a summary of the research in BlackBoard earns one-half of a credit.
You may earn some credit by actively participating in research and some more
credit by reading articles -- it does not have to be all one or the other.
If you elect to earn credit by reading a research article you must not only pass a
quiz on the content of the article but also post in BlackBoard (Discussion Board, Extra
Credit Research Articles) a summary of the research article. Start a new thread with a
title that indicates the authors and date of publication of the article. Post in that thread
your summary of the article. To receive credit for reading an article it must not have
already been previously summarized in BlackBoard.
The summary should include all of the following components:
 Identification of the article as it would be listed in an APA-style Reference List.
 Who or what were the subjects?
 What were the two variables studied, and how were they measured or manipulated?
 Was the study experimental or observational?
 In your words, what did the analysis show?
 Quote the author's summary statement, the statement in which the results of the
statistical technique were presented. Summarize, as best you can, any part of tabular or
graphic presentation which is necessary to understand that statement.
 Critique the statistical presentation. Was it well done, or were there errors? Should
the author have provided some additional statistics to clarify the results?
Here is an example of such a summary:
Citation: End, C. M., Worthman, S., Mathews, M. B., & Wetterau, K. Costly cell
phones: The impact of cell phone rings on academic performance. (2010).
Teaching of Psychology, 37, 55-57. DOI: 10.1080/00986280903425912
Subjects: The subjects were students at Xavier University.
Variables Studied: (1) whether or not the student was interrupted by a ringing cell
phone while watching an educational video, and (2) whether or not the student later
correctly answered an exam item about the information that was being presented at the
time of the cell phone interruption.
Design: Experimental. The researcher randomly assigned subjects to groups and
manipulated whether or not they were interrupted by a ringing cell phone. On the
following examination, each of the critical items was identified as having been correctly
or incorrectly answered.
Conclusions: Interruption by cell phones interferes with students’ learning.
Quote: Participants in the ringing condition scored significantly worse than the
participants in the control condition on the first disrupted item, 2(1, N = 71) = 8.54, p =
.003, and the second disrupted item, 2(1, N = 71) = 6.83, p = .009 (see Table 1 for
percentages).
Critique: The results are reported in good style. It would, however, have been nice if
strength of effect estimates had been provided. As you know, I am fond of odds ratios
for that purpose, so I shall calculate them here.
For test item 1, the odds of correctly answering the item were 94.9/5.1 for those
not interrupted and 68.8/31.2 for those interrupted by the cell phone. This yields an
94.9 / 5.1
 8.44 . The odds of correctly answering the item were more
odds ratio of
68.8 / 31.2
than 8 times higher in the uninterrupted group than in the interrupted group.
For test item 2, the odds of correctly answering the item were 79.5/20.5 for those
not interrupted and 50/50 for those interrupted by the cell phone. This yields an odds
ratio of 79.5/20.5 = 3.88.
Return to the PSYC 2101 Base Page