3 credits
Fall 2025 Lecture
This course is an introduction to research methods in the social, behavioral, and health sciences - with an emphasis on the field of Human Development and Family Science. Doing academic research is about much more than just knowing the correct commands to run in your favorite statistical software. In this course, we will focus on principles rather than techniques; we will consider concepts like how to identify a good question, how to measure the constructs we care about, and how to design research that can address our questions convincingly. There will be a broad focus that spans fundamental questions of how and why we do research, experimental, quasi-experimental, and observational approaches, qualitative designs, ethics, and open science approaches. Students will gain specific knowledge in how to design studies, evaluate research studies, and propose studies that align with their research questions. Open science practices and methods will be emphasized to enhance replicability of research findings. Critically, students will learn to design and communicate appropriate research designs to answer their research questions. Permission from the Instructor is required.
Learning Outcomes1Develop an understanding of the fundamentals of interdisciplinary science and research design across the social, behavioral, and health sciences.
2Develop practical skills for establishing interdisciplinary collaboration, conducting research in collaborative teams.
3Learn best practices for ethical, rigorous, and reproducible research.
4Gain exposure to a variety of research approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, exploratory, and confirmatory approaches.
5Apply a research method to a topic relevant to your own research.
6Improve critical thinking ability in research design and methods.
7Improve written and verbal communication of research methods.
8Read and critique the methods used in the literature across developmental and family topical areas.
9Acquire skills in understanding culture, diversity, equity, and bias as they apply to research design, selection of methods, and applicability of measures across diverse populations.
10Identify, critique, and communicate about methods to design, implement, and evaluate research studies.
11Demonstrate understanding of methods and limits of causal inference using different designs.
12Acquire skills to pre-register their research and understand how open science practices can enhance their research.
Restrictions
made by Purdue students.