Alternative to Research Participation 2

Eisenbruch, A.B., Simmons, Z.L., and Roney, J.R. (2015).Lady in red: Hormonal predictors of women’s clothing choices.Psychological Science, 26, 1332 – 1338.

Question 1.In science, a construct is a theoretical mechanism or rule governing behavior, and a variable is a system of measurement used to represent the construct in a particular study.The main construct in this paper is referred to by the authors as the cycle-phase effect.Without using direct quotes from the paper, and using only the paper you are reading, what is the definition of the cycle-phase effect?

Question 2.No scientific study is any better than the quality of its variables.For example, we probably wouldn’t trust a scientific conclusion that said “the older people get, the shorter they are,” if we saw that the variable “age” in that study was “what is your age:between 18 and 25 years, or 75 years or older?”After all, that version of ‘age’ leaves out everyone under the age of 18, and everyone between the ages of 26 and 74!So let’s look at the variables in the study.The two most important variables in the paper are “is the woman wearing red, yes or no?” and “is the woman fertile?”Having read the entire paper, how do the authors measure each of these variables?As part of your answer, be sure to explain whether you think these are good or bad ways to measure the desired variables, and why.

Question 3.The Introduction of a scientific paper is the section of the paper right after the abstract.Most students are familiar with this part of the paper, because it is a review of other, previously published papers on the same topic – a literature review, as it were (which is the sort of paper many teachers require students to write).One of the important features of the Introduction is to summarize all the previously published papers that are “on point” with the topic of the paper you’re reading.The authors of the paper have to tell you when they are citing someone else’s work, with an in-line citation; in APA style (the writing guidelines for psychology papers), the in-line citation lists the last names of the authors of each paper, followed by the year the paper was published.For example, in the second paragraph of the Introduction, the authors talk about the work of “Beall and Tracy (2013).”

One useful way to decide whether an article is discussing a topic that is interesting to many scientists is to check the in-line citations in the Introduction, to see whether many different authors are publishing research on the topic.In the Introduction of this paper (which starts below the abstract, and continues until you see the header Method), how many different in-line citations are there?Of those in-line citations, do any authors’ names show up more than once?If so, who?Looking at the answers you just gave, do you think the topic of this paper is of interest to many different scientists?Why, or why not?

Question 4.The Method section of a scientific paper runs from the heading Method to the heading Results.There are many technical details to this section of the paper, but the overall goal of this section is to allow replication.In the sciences, to replicate a study is to do the study over again, as close to exactly the same as it was originally done as is possible (except you’re using new participants, of course!).In writing a psychology paper, the Methods section is supposed to be detailed enough that you, the reader, could replicate the study if you wanted to, without having to ask the authors for any additional information.Do you think you could do this study in exactly the same way as did Eisenbruch and colleagues, without asking them any questions – or would you need to ask a few questions?If you need to ask questions, tell me what you think the two most important questions to ask are.

Question 5.The last content area of a scientific paper is the Discussion (or “Conclusion”) section.The authors are supposed to write three things in this section.First, they are to summarize their findings (which amounts to writing the Results section over again, but using only words, with no statistics).Second, the authors get to speculate about WHY they found what they found.Third, the authors are supposed to explain any “Limitations” (or weaknesses) about their paper.If we’re being fair, there’s probably no such thing as a ‘perfect’ paper – which is to say, every paper has flaws or weaknesses.Maybe the researchers should have used different variables.Perhaps the sample of participants had some unusual feature (for example, if you’re studying college students, and the average age of your sample is 37 years old, there’s probably something odd about your sample!). Students often tend to wish that scientists had used more participants in their study – but that particular criticism is one you should wait to make until you’ve had a statistics class, so you know when it is a fair criticism, and when it is not!

That said, for this question, first, write down any limitations the authors report in their paper.Second, explain two features of the research design reported in this paper that you think could have been done better.