If you teach psychology, it will come as no surprise that many of your students greet research methods and statistics with some trepidation. It’s a far bigger surprise to them that so much of their degree is consumed by this when they’re expecting to learn about how the brain works and why we think, feel and behave in the ways we do.
This was the case for me when I returned to university to study a psychology conversion masters at the University of London’s wonderful Birkbeck. Thrown back into busy lectures alongside undergraduates and postgraduates of all ages and walks of life, it didn’t take long to get used to accessing resources through Moodle and submitting assignments using Turnitin. What I didn’t expect was that research methods and statistics would be the most difficult and daunting part of the syllabus, despite the great efforts of a fantastic teaching team.
And yet, this would prove the most valuable part of the degree. During my studies I became publisher for our psychology list, and my experience of studying research methods and statistics gave me the insight and research tools to identify a near-universal set of challenges faced by students and lecturers in this subject. It helped me understand what would (and what would not) help solve these challenges, and provided the inspiration for a new learning resource for psychology students, Research Right.
Here I will share my key lessons about these challenges learned through my study experience and our market research.
One of my lecturers accurately likened her methods module to ‘climbing Everest’. Lots of students are afraid of maths but, even if you are relatively comfortable, statistics can be terrifying. The alien terminology, the equations, baffling software, understanding what any of this means in practice … it’s a very steep learning curve.
On the flip side, lecturers find it hard to engage students and build confidence, and they’re grappling with students with widely differing ability levels.
I confess this is not a real statistic; it is an anecdotal observation made between me and my fellow students at the end of pretty much every research methods lecture where we would decry how little we had understood. The material was always so complex that it was impossible to take much in, no matter that our lecturers were always so engaging and supportive.
When conducting market research with lecturers teaching the subject, I could immediately recognise why almost all voiced their greatest challenge being the amount of time they spend recapping material and fielding student queries.
I really appreciated practical workshops where we could work through a method or analysis at our own speed, and was eternally grateful when lectures were recorded so I could play them back when having to work through assignments.
I relied on resources for this subject more than any other part of the psychology curriculum. I needed a wide range to navigate my way through difficult assignments: a massive compendium of a textbook; a shorter guide that broke concepts down into simpler terms; lecture slides; my notes; recorded lectures; software how-tos; and so many desperate ‘what does this mean?’ or ‘how do I do this?’ internet searches on the many occasions I would find myself stuck.
Despite an array of resources, I and my fellow students would still find it hard to find the guidance that we needed, when we needed it, framed in a way that was relevant to psychology.
Even the best resources had frustrating gaps where prior knowledge was assumed. Running into something you don’t understand can throw you and make you lose confidence. It’s sometimes hard to know what terms to look up in an index or an internet search to find an answer.
This was especially the case when it came to formulae. Lots of textbooks have a helpful BODMAS reminder … but they don’t tell you how to perform various functions using a calculator, what a number like 1-8 means, or how to interpret odds ratios.
You can’t make things too simple, at least to begin with.
The process of meticulously transcribing interviews, identifying and coding themes, and checking your own biases in how you interpret data is far more complex and time-consuming than we as students assume. I’ve heard from lecturers at universities offering a distinct qualitative track that students opt for this because they hate maths and mistakenly think qualitative will be an easier ride.
At the time of writing* there is no equivalent of SPSS that can whizz through qualitative data and indicate any interesting patterns. You’ve got to do all of that legwork yourself.
*I’m sure AI will address this imminently…
One of the biggest challenges lecturers cite is getting students to understand how to apply theory, and to do so critically.
From a student’s perspective, it is hard enough understanding a concept or statistical analysis in its own right – what it is, what it means, when you use it, what the steps are, how you interpret it – let alone being able to apply this knowledge flexibly.
Plenty of hands-on, practical exercises and examples can really help develop and reinforce that understanding to the point where it can be applied with confidence to a range of research and data analysis scenarios.
One of the biggest boons of learning this subject is that you’re better equipped to make sense of stats and scientific reporting in everyday life.
We may not be running t-tests every day, but understanding research methods and statistics gives us the power to spot a misleading headline or conclusion, understand that correlation doesn’t equal causation, identify misinformation, and see where impressive claims are based on far-from-robust studies. We also gain awareness of how biases such as confirmation bias influence our beliefs and decision-making.
With a little (okay, a lot) of help, research methods and statistics can be one of the most rewarding parts of studying psychology. From personal experience, that ‘aha!’ moment where you finally get a difficult concept is amazing. Starting to do your own research, and finding patterns in data using analytical methods you’ve learned, is genuinely exciting!
Jenna Steventon is Publisher for Politics, Psychology and Sociology at Bloomsbury, and the publisher of Research Right – a new digital resource for psychology students learning research methods and statistics, now available in early release for free classroom trials.
Find out more about Research Right.
