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Cover of Research Methods: Core Concepts and Skills for Psychology v3.0
Published: 
June 2023
Page Count: 
314
ISBN (Digital): 
978-1-4533-4123-0

Research Methods: Core Concepts and Skills for Psychology

Version 3.0
By Paul C. Price

Included Supplements

Key Features

  • Clear and concise writing style avoids details that rarely surface in practice and allows time for supplemental readings from research articles, blogs, and other sources
  • Follows the typical organization of standard research methods textbooks and course syllabi
  • Over 100 embedded hyperlinks to videos and webpages to enrich online courses 
  • Introduces the concept of open science in Chapter 1 “Scientific Psychology”
  • Includes a wide variety of subfields that are often overlooked, such as cognitive, comparative, counseling, clinical, and personality psychology
  • Minimizes technical and philosophical digressions in the narrative to avoid distracting students from the main points, while offering assignable enrichment activities on such topics in the instructor’s manual
  • Plentiful embedded links to resources such as Google Scholar, archival data sets, open-access journals, and videos
  • Concluding Chapter 14 “ The Big Picture” conveys an overall perspective of key issues in psychological research such as the replication crisis, meta-analysis, and various open-science practices
  • Supportive learning elements in each chapter:
    • Chapter opening stories connect with students and emphasize the human side of research projects
    • “Key Terms” help students understand and become comfortable with important vocabulary and phrasing
    • “Learning Objectives” at the beginning of each main section preview the material to come and prepare students to learn
    • High-Interest “call-out” boxes in each chapter highlight important, interesting, or controversial topics such as “APA Ethics Code” (Section 3.2), “Does Psychotherapy Work?" (Section 7.3), or “The Misunderstood p Value” (Section 13.2)
    • “Key Takeaways” at the end of every main section summarize new information while it is still fresh and strengthens retention
    • Exercises at the end of every main section are organized by “Practice” and “Discussion” to help students actively consolidate and retain what they have just read 
    • Answer guidelines for all exercises are provided in the instructor’s manual
  • All supplements are written by the textbook’s author

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Research Methods: Core Concepts and Skills for Psychology is suitable for courses called Psychological Research Methods, Experimental Psychology, or Experimental Research Design or similar titles primarily taught at the undergraduate level in departments of psychology at four-year colleges and universities.

Research Methods: Core Concepts and Skills for Psychology features a standard organization—making it easy to assign in conjunction with most existing syllabi. The book emphasizes a fundamental idea: research methods are not a peripheral concern but are central to the discipline. The overarching goal of this textbook is to present the basics of psychological research methods in a straightforward manner. It focuses on the concepts and skills that are most widely shared within the discipline, while emphasizing both their centrality to the field and their contribution to the understanding of human behavior. In the process, it prepares students to be effective consumers of research, promotes critical thinking skills that are applicable across subfields and disciplines, and fosters attitudes that enhance overall life skills.

New in This Version

  • New subsection on “Improving Scientific Research in Psychology,” including a new video link on open science and a new call-out box on the topic (Section 1.2)
  • Links to new TedTalk video illustrates one of 50 great myths in psychology and new video on confirmation bias (Section 1.3)
  • Expanded list of empirically supported treatments (Section 1.4)
  • New Chapter 2 opening story on trigger warnings (Chapter 2)
  • Added discussion of error bars (Section 2.1)
  • Link to new video “Correlation Does not Imply Causation” (Section 2.1)
  • Link to new video acknowledging and apologizing for Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment– “They Were Betrayed” (Section 3.1)
  • Link to new video on Nuremberg doctors trial (Section 3.2)
  • Updated discussion of informed consent forms (Section 3.2)
  • Revised discussion of replication including the associated key term (Section 4.1)
  • Updated coverage of Piaget, including a new video link (Section 4.2)
  • Revised coverage of “The Big Five,” including a new video link (Section 5.1)
  • Link to new video showing aggressive behavior in Bandura’s famous study (Section 5.1)
  • New comparative psychology example, “What Is an Experiment?” (Section 6.1)
  • Updated discussion of “External Validity” (Section 6.1)
  • More recent example of a field experiment (Section 6.1)
  • Link to new video of the Muller-Lyer illusion (Section 6.1)
  • Link to new video on placebo effects (Section 6.2)
  • New section on “Follow Open-Science Practices,” including a new video link on the topic (Section 6.3)
  • New call-out box on archival data (Section 7.2)
  • Replaced “The Case of Anna O” with “The Case of Little Albert,” including an associated video link (Section 10.1)
  • Link to new video on applied behavior analysis (Section 10.1)
  • Link to new video about APA-style citations (Section 11.1)
  • Link to new video about the conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (Section 11.3)
  • Link to new video about distribution shapes (Section 12.1)
  • Revised discussion of error bars (Section 12.3)
  • New call-out box on statistical software programs, including JASP output (Section 12.4)
  • Link to new video about sampling error (Section 13.1)
  • Link to new video explaining Type I and Type II errors (Section 13.3)
  • Revised discussion of how to compute power (Section 13.3)
  • Link to new TedTalk video on narcissism (Section 14.2)
  • Revised discussion of meta-analysis (Section 14.2)
  • New key term “forest plot” with accompanying JASP-based figure and how to interpret it (Section 14.2)
  • New call-out box about “Meta-Analysis and the Brain” (Section 14.2)
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Dedication
  • Preface

    • Chapter 1: Scientific Psychology

  • 1.1 Understanding Science
  • 1.2 Scientific Research in Psychology
  • 1.3 Science and Common Sense
  • 1.4 Science and Clinical Practice

    • Chapter 2: Research Basics

  • 2.1 Basic Concepts
  • 2.2 Good Research Questions
  • 2.3 Reviewing the Research Literature

    • Chapter 3: Research Ethics

  • 3.1 Moral Foundations of Ethical Research
  • 3.2 From Moral Principles to Ethics Codes
  • 3.3 Putting Ethics Into Practice

    • Chapter 4: Theories in Psychology

  • 4.1 Phenomena and Theories
  • 4.2 The Variety of Theories in Psychology
  • 4.3 Using Theories in Psychological Research

    • Chapter 5: Psychological Measurement

  • 5.1 Understanding Psychological Measurement
  • 5.2 Reliability and Validity of Measurement
  • 5.3 Practical Strategies for Psychological Measurement

    • Chapter 6: Experimental Research

  • 6.1 Experiment Basics
  • 6.2 Experimental Design
  • 6.3 Conducting Experiments

    • Chapter 7: Nonexperimental Research

  • 7.1 Overview of Nonexperimental Research
  • 7.2 Correlational Research
  • 7.3 Quasi-Experimental Research
  • 7.4 Qualitative Research

    • Chapter 8: Complex Research Designs

  • 8.1 Multiple Dependent Variables
  • 8.2 Multiple Independent Variables
  • 8.3 Complex Correlational Designs

    • Chapter 9: Survey Research

  • 9.1 Overview of Survey Research
  • 9.2 Constructing Survey Questionnaires
  • 9.3 Conducting Surveys

    • Chapter 10: Single-Subject Research

  • 10.1 Overview of Single-Subject Research
  • 10.2 Single-Subject Research Designs
  • 10.3 The Single-Subject Versus Group “Debate”

    • Chapter 11: Presenting Research

  • 11.1 American Psychological Association (APA) Style
  • 11.2 Writing a Research Report in American Psychological Association (APA) Style
  • 11.3 Other Presentation Formats

    • Chapter 12: Descriptive Statistics

  • 12.1 Describing Single Variables
  • 12.2 Describing Statistical Relationships
  • 12.3 Expressing Your Results
  • 12.4 Conducting Your Analyses

    • Chapter 13: Inferential Statistics

  • 13.1 Understanding Null Hypothesis Testing
  • 13.2 Some Basic Null Hypothesis Tests
  • 13.3 Additional Considerations

    • Chapter 14: The Big Picture

  • 14.1 Why Individual Studies Can Be Misleading
  • 14.2 Meta-Analysis
  • 14.3 Progress and the Promise of Open Science
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    Paul C. Price California State University, Fresno

    Paul C. Price (PhD University of Michigan) is Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fresno and previously taught at the University of Michigan. Among the courses Paul teaches regularly are an introduction to the psychology major, statistics, research methods, and health psychology. His overarching goal as a teacher is to help students learn to think carefully and critically about human behavior, and to show them that doing so can be fun. Paul's research is in the areas of judgment and reasoning, including likelihood and risk judgment, social judgment, and basic quantitative reasoning. He is on the editorial board of Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, has received the Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence from California State University, Fresno, and is the recipient of two National Science Foundation research grants.

    Additions & Errata

    6/21/24:

    Section 11.2: Adjusted the discussion of the order of tables, figures, and appendixes in APA Style.

    Section 12.1: Fixed errant "x" in the equation for z score under the "Percentiule Ranks and z Scores" section.

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