Doing Collaborative Research in Psychology: A Team-Based Guide

Doing Collaborative Research in Psychology offers an engaging journey through the process of conducting research in psychology. Using an innovative team-based approach, this hands-on guide will assist undergraduates with their research―in their courses and in collaboration with faculty or graduate student mentors. The focus on this team-based approach reflects the collaborative nature of research methods and experimental psychology. Students learn how to work as a team, generate creative research ideas, design and pilot studies, recruit participants, collect and analyze data, write up results in APA style, and prepare and give formal research presentations. Students also learn practical ways in which they can promote their research skills as they apply to jobs or graduate school. A unique feature to this book is the ability to read chapters of the text either sequentially or separately, which allows the instructor or research mentor the flexibility to assign those chapters most relevant to the current state of the research project.

Jerusha B. Detweiler-Bedell is Associate Professor of Psychology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland,Oregon. She received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale University. Her program of research brings together investigations of human decision-making, health psychology, and clinical psychology, with the goal of promoting health behaviors by understanding why people fail to do ‘what’s best’ for their physical and mental well-being. She co-directs the Behavioral Health and Social Psychology laboratory, where she conducts research with undergraduate student collaborators. The Detweiler-Bedells were awarded a National Science Foundation Course, Curriculum, & Laboratory Inprovement (CCLI) grant in 2008 to further develop and disseminate their methods of mentoring undergraduates in research. Jerusha has co-authored a number of journal articles and the book Treatment Planning in Psychotherapy: Taking the Guesswork Out of Clinical Care. In 2008 Jerusha was named the United States Professor of the Year for Baccalaureate Colleges by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Brian Detweiler-Bedell is Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He received his B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in social psychology from Yale University. His research examines the influence of emotion on social judgment and decision-making. Together with his wife, Brian co-directs the Behavioral Health and Social Psychology laboratory, which provides an immersive research experience to over a dozen undergraduate student collaborators each year. In 2008 the Detweiler-Bedells were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for their project entitled, Using Laddered Teams to Promote a Research Supportive Curriculum. Brian has authored a number of journal articles on emotion and decision-making, and he recently served as Director of Lewis & Clark College’s HHMI-funded undergraduate science education program, Collaborative Approaches to Undergraduate Science Education (CAUSE).