Week 2 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 2 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 65–76 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–22 min total)

• Psychological Research: Crash Course Psychology #2 — CrashCourse
• The Basics: NIH Clinical Research Trials and You — National Institutes of Health
• About The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee — U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

① How does a hunch become a measurement? The research loop and good measures

Chapter 2, Section “Run the research loop: turn a fuzzy idea into a measurement” · Session 1, Segment 1, “The research loop and descriptive research” · Remember: a construct is not measurable until you write the exact procedure that measures it.

• Psychological Research: Crash Course Psychology #2 — CrashCourse — a fast tour of case studies, observation, surveys, correlation, and experiments, and of why intuition and hindsight mislead us. This builds on Week 1's work with what makes psychology a science. Stop when the episode ends; the brain and nervous system come next, and Week 3 takes them up. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
• Reliability vs Validity — Simply Psychology — read the opening and the part on assessing reliability to see why a consistent measure can still miss its target; the later sections on reporting are optional. Use it while working through the Week-2 module overview. (reading, 6–9 min)

② Linked or caused? Reading a correlation honestly

Chapter 2, Section “Explain why correlation is not causation” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Reading a correlation” · Remember: a correlation earns the words associated with, and a third variable or a reversed arrow can explain it.

• Correlation and causation — Australian Bureau of Statistics — a short government page on why two things that rise and fall together need not cause each other, and on what it takes to show a cause. (reading, 4–6 min)
• Correlation Doesn't Equal Causation: Crash Course Statistics #8 — CrashCourse — what a correlation coefficient measures, how strong and weak links look, and the classic ways a link gets mistaken for a cause. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)

③ Who is studied, and who gets what? Experiments and two kinds of random

Chapter 2, Section “Run an experiment: change one thing and measure the result” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Experiments and random assignment” · Remember: random sampling decides who is in the study, and random assignment decides which condition each person gets.

• The Basics: NIH Clinical Research Trials and You — National Institutes of Health — a federal health agency's plain answers about research studies; open the question on placebo, randomization, and blinding to see random assignment described as giving each treatment by chance rather than by choice. (reading, 3–5 min)
• Methods 101: Random Sampling — Pew Research Center — a two-minute look at how a survey team gives everyone in a population an equal chance to be picked. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
• Random Sampling vs. Random Assignment — Jason Popan — a short side-by-side of the two procedures and what each one lets a researcher conclude. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)

④ How are participants protected? Consent, review, and the history behind them

Chapter 2, Section “Protect the people in the study: research ethics” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Measures and research ethics” · Remember: every study with people needs informed consent, the right to withdraw, debriefing after deception, and IRB approval first.

• About The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee — U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the public-health agency's own account of the study, the missing consent and treatment, and the reforms that followed. (reading, 4–6 min)
• Informed Consent for Research: What to Expect — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — what a volunteer should be told before agreeing to join a study, and the questions worth asking. (video, 8 min) (captions: creator)
• How IRBs Protect Human Research Participants — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — what an Institutional Review Board checks before a study may begin. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• What Regulations Protect Research Participants? — Office for Human Research Protections — the federal office that oversees the rules protecting research volunteers explains the two key protections in those rules, review by an institutional review board (IRB) and informed consent; this course adds the right to withdraw, debriefing, and the limits on deception. (reading, 2–4 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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