The Project: In Psychology 435: Abnormal Psychology, students designed research projects around a preexisting data set I collected in advance of the course. The data set includes a variety of demographic questions (e.g., age, gender, employment and marital status), questions about their upbringing (e.g., how were they parented), and the Symptom Checklist-90 SCL-90), a survey of 90 questions related to mental illness symptomatology. Using this data set, students developed a research question, analyzed the data, and wrote up the results. Though the assignment was originally to write a short lab report on the project, I offered them the option of presenting the results here via a poster or video presentation instead.
Although this is an upper-level psychology course, research methods is not a prerequisite. For many of the students in this course, this was their first foray into conducting original research.
-Dr. Ryan Martin
Authors: Paige Anderson, Samantha Bartkowiak, Michaela Bunch, Kelsi Engelhardt, Miranda Eytcheson, Natalie Gawron, Jena Krueger, Hannah Mertens, Josette Ott, Stephanie Quick, Nicolas Withey
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Ryan Martin
Keywords: Mental Illness
