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and differences among the lists. As a variation of the precourse knowledge questionnaire
(Nuhfer, 2004; Wirth & Perkins, 2005), the first part of the Best/Worst assignment helps
the instructor gauge students’ initial knowledge and assumptions. The whole-class discus-
sion also enables the instructor to preview a range of relevant dimensions and criteria that
psychologists use to evaluate research, including the extent to which it is ethical, valid,
reliable, systematic, controlled, and unbiased.
At the beginning of the semester, students frequently nominate applied research topics
for the “best” problem category and give less positive (“worst”) evaluations to basic research
topics. Studies of humans are often evaluated more positively than studies of nonhuman
animals, especially if the animals are rodents or, even worse, amphibians. Together, these
choices suggest that many students are skeptical about the value of animal models and have
an initial bias that leads them to believe that research with human participants has a higher
likelihood of directly improving people’s lives and well-being. In comparison with research
problems and questions, students tend to have more difficulty evaluating methods, at least
initially. They are also more likely to explain that a method was the “worst” because the
article’s Method section was difficult for them to understand than because the sample was
too small or the measures lacked reliability, validity, or a clear operational definition.
Understanding Students’ Thinking about the Best and the Worst
How do beginning research methods students approach the first Best/Worst assignment?
Which resources do they tend to use? These questions were explored with a Student
Approaches Questionnaire inspired by a well-known rubric for assessing critical thinking
(Condon & Kelly-Riley, 2004). Results from several sections of the course indicate that,
at the outset, many students selected their four examples by using their own values and
personal beliefs more often than they turned to authoritative sources such as the APA
ethical principles and code of conduct (American Psychological Association, 2002) or
information from their research methods textbook. They rated finding “worst” examples
of problems and methods as being more difficult than finding “best” examples. In the
follow-up discussion, many students stated that they believed that, by virtue of having
been published, articles appearing in journals could not truly belong in the “worst” cate-
gory. With little personal experience as research participants, let alone as researchers, most
students were unable to use their own direct observations as a basis for their answers.
Many students drew on previous psychology courses and reported using sources that
others (e.g., other instructors or authors of books about “important” studies in psychol-
ogy) had identified as being valuable or flawed.
Questionnaire responses also indicated that students found the initial Best/Worst class
discussion worthwhile and enjoyed the assignment. Representative comments included,
“It forced me to think about things like the relevance of articles and the importance of
researching problems using ethical/scientific methods” and “Great assignment to get us
thinking!” Students said that it was “Interesting to find mistakes in articles, which helps
us to edit our own work,” and noted that “The vague nature of the assignment was good –
we could select anything we wanted—but it also made it difficult to decide what to use.”