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Division on Addictions Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge Health Alliance
Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introductory Course
Next Offering TBD. Email Sarah Nelson: snelson@hms.harvard.edu if interested in participating.
Course Director Sarah Nelson, PhD
Faculty Heather Gray, PhD
Faculty John Kleschinsky, MPH
Faculty Julia Braverman, PhD
Faculty Debi LaPlante, PhD
Faculty Ryan Martin, PhD
The Division on Addictions offers a special course that
will provide an introduction to research methodology in the social sciences,
presented within the context of the addictions. The course will be tailored
to the participants, providing hands-on feedback for participants attempting
to design their own research and/or providing an understanding of research
methodology necessary for participants wishing to become critical consumers
of research.
The primary goal of this course is to provide participants with the tools
necessary to be critical consumers of research and (if desired) begin to
design their own research. By the end of the course, participants will be
able to critically evaluate empirical research, identify critical components
and potential pitfalls of research designs, and determine the appropriate
research design for a given research question.
Class 1 Sarah Nelson / Course Introduction
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This research methodology webpage, maintained by Jonathan Mueller, has many useful links to research methods lectures, exercises, and examples.
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Taubes, G. (2001). The soft science of dietary fat. Science, 291(5513), 2536-2545.
Class 2 Heather Gray / Research Design Overview
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Ferguson, E., Farrell, K., & Lawrence, C. (2008). Blood donation is an act of benevolence rather than altruism. Health Psychology, 27(3), 327-336. [This article provides a nice example of multiple methods being used to examine one research question.]
Class 3 John Kleschinsky / Research Design Part II Data Collection and Procedures
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Kleschinsky, J. H., Bosworth, L. B., Nelson, S. E., Walsh, E. K., & Shaffer, H. J. (2009). Persistence pays off: Follow-up methods for difficult-to-track longitudinal samples. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 70(5), 751-761. [This is an example for our work of methods used (and lessons learned) to follow-up a challenging sample.]
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Cottler, L. B., Compton, W. M., Ben Abdallah, A., Horne, M., & Claverie, D. (1996). Achieving a 96.6% follow-up rate in a longitudinal study of drug abusers. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 41, 209-217.
Class 4 Julia Braverman / Measurement and Validity
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Garner, D., Olmstead, M., & Polivy, J. (1983). Development and validation of a multidimensional eating disorder inventory for anorexia nervosa and bulimia. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2(2), 15-34.
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Mogge, N. L., & LePage, J. P. (2004). The Assessment of Depression Inventory (ADI): A new instrument used to measure depression and to detect honesty of response. Depression and Anxiety, 20(3), 107-113. [These articles provide nice examples of how to build and validate a new assessment scale. This includes various techniques to ensure validity and reliability of the scale that we discussed in class. You may also notice something that is not there.]
Class 5 Sarah Nelson / Crash Course in Statistics
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Abelson, R. P. (1995). Making claims with statistics. In R. Abelson (Ed.), Statistics as principled argument (pp. 1-16). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
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Cohen, J. (1994). The Earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist, 49(12), 997-1003.
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Gigerenzer, G., Gaissmaier, W., Kurz-Milcke, E., Schwartz, L. M., & Woloshin, Steven. (2007). Helping doctors and patients make sense of health statistics. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 8(2), 53-96.
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Kerr, N. L. (1998). HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(3), 196-217.
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Kluger, A. N., & Tikochinsky, J. (2001). The error of accepting the theoretical null hypothesis: The rise, fall, and resurrection of commonsense hypotheses in psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 127(3), 408-423.
Class 6 Sarah Nelson / More on Design -- Causality
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Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182.
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Feynman, R. P. (1974). Cargo cult science: Some remarks on science, pseudoscience, and learning how to not fool yourself. Caltech's 1974 commencement address. Engineering and Science, 37(7), 10-13.
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Gerber, J. S., & Offit, P. A. (2009). Vaccines and Autism: A tale of shifting hypotheses. Clinical Infectious Disease, 48, 456-461.
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Streiner, D. L., Patten, S. B., Anthony. J. C., & Cairney, J. (2009). Has lifetime prevalence reached the end of its life? An examination of the concept. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research, 18(4), 221-228.
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Wakefield, A. J. et al. (1998). Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet, 351(9103), 637-641. [This is the original article suggesting a link between MMR vaccination and autism that has recently been retracted by the Lancet.]
Class 7 Ryan Martin / Research Ethics
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Human subjects training: http://www.hrsa.gov/humansubjects/
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de los A. Medina, M. (2007). Ethics in statistics. Connexions module m15555 available at http://cnx.org/content/m15555/1.1/.
Class 8 Debi LaPlante / The Context of Research
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Zaccai, J. H. (2004). How to assess epidemiological studies. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 80(941), 140-147. Abstract available at http://pmj.bmj.com/content/80/941/140.abstract; full text available at http://pmj.bmj.com/content/80/941/140.full.
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Greenhalgh, T. (1997). Assessing the methodological quality of published papers. British Medical Journal, 315(7103), 305308. Available at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/315/7103/305.
Class 9 Sarah Nelson / Course Conclusion
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Bem, D. (2004). Writing the empirical journal article. In J. M. Darley, M. P. Zanna, & H. L. Roediger III (Eds.) The compleat academic (2nd Ed., pp. 185-219). Washington, DC: APA.
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McGuire, W. J. (1997). Creative hypothesis generating in psychology: Some useful heuristics. Annual Review of Psychology, 48, 1-30.