Research Methods and Techniques II: Quantitative Methods

6 ECTS credits
180 h study time

Offer 2 with catalog number 1007336BNR for all students in the 2nd semester at a (B) Bachelor - advanced level.

Semester

2nd semester

Enrollment based on exam contract

Impossible

Grading method

Grading (scale from 0 to 20)

Can retake in second session

Yes

Enrollment Requirements

For this course you have to meet certain enrolment requirements. For an overview of the enrolment requirements check https://www.vub.be/en/studying-vub/practical-info-for-students/study-guidance/study-path/individual-study-path#paragraph--id--71647 Students must have taken ‘Research Methods and Techniques I: psychometrics’ AND 'Statistics II: probability Theory and inductive Statistics' before they can enroll in ‘Research Methods and Techniques II: Quantitative Methods’. Students who are enrolled in a shortened study program can take this course unit.

Taught in

English

Faculty

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences

Department

Experimental and Applied Psychology

Educational team

Tim Vantilborgh (course titular)
Theresa Leyens
Eva Mertens
Sarah Cameron
Valentina Sagmeister

Activities and contact hours

30 contact hours Lecture
12 contact hours Seminar, Exercises or Practicals
36 contact hours Independent or External Form of Study

Course Content

The goal of this course is to learn how to critically evaluate psychological research. This course stimulates critical reflection about research. You will learn how to systematically evaluate the validity of claims in research.

The following topics will covered in the course:

- The research process

- Internal, external, conclusion, and construct validity

- Ethics in research and open science practices

- Characteristics of good measurement

- Survey research

- Sampling

- Correlational research

- Experimental research

- Quasi-experimental research

- Replicability and generalizability of research

Course material

Digital course material (Required) : Slides and additional study material, Canvas
Handbook (Required) : Research methods in psychology, Morling, B, 6de, W.W. Norton & Company, 9781324033318, 2023
Handbook (Required) : Concise Guide to APA Style, American Psychological Association, 7de, American Psychological Association, 9781433832734, 2019

Additional info

All Students:

Materials:

Morling, B. (2022). Research methods in psychology: Evaluating a world of information (5th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393643602
American Psychological Association. (2019). Concise Guide to APA style. (7th ed.) American Psychological Association. ISBN13: 978-1-4338-3273-4

Slides on Canvas

Extra materials will be made available on Canvas

Learning Outcomes

Algemene competenties

- The student can identify research questions

- The student can categorize studies into research making claims about frequenties, relationships, and causal relationships

- The student can systematically evaluate research on internal, external, conclusion, and construct validity

- The student can evaluate the reliability and construct validity of measures

- The student can distinguish experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational research, and knows the advantages and disadvantages of each

- The student understands why experimental research is able to establish causality

- The student can interpret results from experimental designs

- The student can evaluate whether results of a study can be generalized

- The student can evaluate whether a study follows ethical guidelines

- The study can communicate on research in line with the APA-guidelines

Grading

The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
Written Exam determines 70% of the final mark.
LEC Paper determines 30% of the final mark.

Within the Written Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Written exam multiple choice with a relative weight of 70 which comprises 70% of the final mark.

Within the LEC Paper category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Paper with a relative weight of 30 which comprises 30% of the final mark.

Additional info regarding evaluation

Evaluation:

Written exam with multiple-choice questions (70%)
Paper (30%)

The multiple-choice exam will be graded by positive scoring with a Higher Cutoff. Therefore, no points will be deducted for a wrong answer. However, guessing to earn points will be accounted for in the final score by raising the pass threshold (= cutoff). The cutoff for the exam and the exact conversion table will be communicated in a timely manner on Canvas and in the exam instructions. The exam strategy is simple with this method: do your best throughout the exam, and for questions you do not know or only partially know, guess to the best of your ability without worrying about possible point deductions.

If during or after the exam it becomes clear that there was confusion about certain questions, the course instructor can choose to remove these questions from the exam. This then applies to all students but can never cause disadvantages for a single student.

Not completing the written exam or assignment will lead to an absent on the entire course.

Students have to get 10/20 on every one of the course parts to succeed for the course. If you get a failing grade for one of the parts, you will receive the lowest partial grade as the final grade. The partial grade for which you succeeded in the first sitting can be transferred to the second sitting and you will not have to take up this course part again.

The use of generative AI is allowed for certain parts of the evaluation: In the assignment, it is permitted to use generative AI only for spelling correction and language improvement. Any use of generative AI should be properly referenced (see APA7 guidelines).

2nd exam period: If students failed the course in the first exam period, they need to redo those parts of the course on which they failed (written exam, assignment, or both). The assignment is always done individually in the second exam period. If students failed the course in the first exam period, but passed one of the course components (written exam or assignment), they can transfer the grade from the first exam period on that course component to the second exam period. Students who do not wish to transfer the grade on this passed course component need to contact the course instructor before the exam in the second exam period.

Allowed unsatisfactory mark

The supplementary Teaching and Examination Regulations of your faculty stipulate whether an allowed unsatisfactory mark for this programme unit is permitted.

Academic context