h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I bought a hoover today, well technically a Vaccum cleaner, but that i believe to be a minor technicality. Said hoover was bought because the one that came with the flat displays a distinct lack of suction, even after replacing the bag, and checking the hose for obstructions.

I had a research methods lecture today, for the past few weeks these have consisted of various members of the Psychology teaching staff visiting for 10 minutes each to tell us a little about the kind of research that they undertake, and also about the kinds of projects that they prefer to supervise. So while one of the staff was going on about Social Psychology, I began thinking what I could do my research project on.

So i grabbed my notebook (the one with the mouse on it, that has yellow paper in it) and after doodling for a few minutes (a snail, a sea-horse, some stars and a priest) I started to put down some ideas. The main areas I am interested in are Development, Language, Memory and Cognition. I then thought about the groups I could test, There's other students, which is easiest, There are my Cubs and Scouts (obviously with permission from their parents) and there is of course all the members of my favourite website, yes you lot!

Of course I am only in the infancy of thinking about ideas, and if I want to study things like Age and Gender differences, then I of course need to potentially use individuals form all of my potential participant groups. But it's kind of fun to actually be allowed to think about designing my own research and how I will carry it out.

Now i need to go hang the laundry to dry, and unpack the hoover to check it works before taking a bath.

mini

badgers!

Are the badgers part of your research group as well?

Hi Mini

Good luck with that. I'm not sure what the ethics implications are for testing with research subjects that you know online. We've done a number of online based surveys in our research group, (well people other than me).

You'd probably still need to get university ethics approval to do it though.

We had a couple of psychology students do a project at our skeptics in the pub group. They got a very high compliance rate!

Just as long as the testing doesn't involve giant needles or electrodes...

Any and all projects must get full ethics approval. And anything I'm asking you lot to do will be anonymised and probably fill in online style.

mini

Interesting. I'd totally sign up for that research!

Count me in.

At least I know that at this distance there won't be any electrodes...