This study assesses the effectiveness of critical thinking drills (CTDs), a repetitious classroom activity designed to improve methodological and statistical thinking in relation to psychological claims embedded in popular press articles. In each of four separate CTDs, students critically analyzed a brief article reporting a recent psychological…

Refutation-style texts have been considered a viable strategy for changing psychological misconceptions. The current study aims to integrate refutation-style texts into a classroom-based method of learning. Psychology students were administered a true/false misconception survey and then viewed several refutation-style poster presentations…

Classroom demonstrations help students better understand challenging concepts. This article introduces an activity that demonstrates the basic concepts involved in analysis of variance (ANOVA). Students who physically participated in the activity had a better understanding of ANOVA concepts (i.e., higher scores on an exam question answered 2…

Reviews the recent suggestion (by McGown and Spencer) that construction of tests for introductory statistics is facilitated if data sets have means and standard deviations that are integers. Maintains that it is fairly easy to devise data sets with integer means and standard deviations for larger samples. Explains advantages and describes…

Describes the use of DATAGEN, a BASIC computer program which generates independent and correlated data samples from population parameters specified by the instructor. Maintains that DATAGEN facilitates the demonstration of some fundamental statistical concepts and encourages students to work independently. (Author/JDH)

Understanding the concept of interaction is vital to understanding the relationships of dimensions of phenomena under study. Use of multivariate analysis of variance is described as a useful approach for discovering the extent to which events may be complexly interaffecting. (Author/AV)

Describes two QuickBASIC programs that provide students direct experience with interpreting correlation scatter-plots. Maintains that the programs can be used in classroom exercises to highlight factors that influence the size of a Pearson correlation coefficient. (CFR)

Describes a QuickBASIC program for demonstrating the differences between main effects and interactions in factorial designs. The program can be used in conjunction with a traditional lecture to improve student understanding and develop skills in recognizing main effects and interactions from graphic displays. (CFR)

Describes and evaluates a method for involving large numbers of introductory psychology students as active researchers via an assigned project involving computer analyzed data. Results indicate students valued research more, understood statistical procedures better, and felt less anxious about statistics and computers. Suggests a viable way to…