Resource Library

The Research Methods Knowledge Base is a comprehensive web-based textbook that addresses all of the topics in a typical introductory undergraduate or graduate course in social research methods.  It covers the entire research process including: formulating research questions; sampling (probability and nonprobability); measurement (surveys, scaling, qualitative, unobtrusive); research design (experimental and quasi-experimental); data analysis; and, writing the research paper.  It also addresses the major theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of research including: the idea of validity in research; reliability of measures; and ethics.  The Knowledge Base was designed to be different from the many typical commercially-available research methods texts.  It uses an informal, conversational style to engage both the newcomer and the more experienced student of research.  It is a fully hyperlinked text that can be integrated easily into an existing course structure or used as a sourcebook for the experienced researcher who simply wants to browse.

Navigate this source:  http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/contents.php  

This site is a collection of resources related to experiments. The site includes references, resources, and articles related to the scientific method, experimental research, ethics in research, and research design. It also includes tips on writing scientific papers, and there are several statistics tutorials on the site. Another interesting feature of the site is a collection of case studies that include descriptions of famous research studies in fields like social psychology, sociology, physics, biology, and medicine.

The Journal of Statistics Education provides a collection of Java applets and excel spreadsheets (and the articles associated with them) from as early as 1998 on this webpage.

This applet displays various distributions and allows the user to experiment with the parameters to see the effects on the curve.

This collection of Analysis Tools can assist students and researchers with questions about study desgin, data analysis, and probability. Topics include sample size, power, survival, binomial probabilities, interaction, Fisher's exact test, one and two sample tests, and more.

I am addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter. A quote of American stand-up comedian, painter, author, and actor Steven Wright (1955 - ).

A joke to be used in teaching about the use of randomization in experiments or about the Pearson correlation coefficient. The idea for the joke came from Lawrence Mark Lesser of The University of Texas at El Paso in 2012.

This site is a government-run repository of information on current and completed clinical trials. Users can search for clinical trials by disease type and also by whether the trial is currently recruiting. Then a detailed description of the trial is given. This can be used in a classroom setting to discuss design issues and ethical issues with clinical trials.

This website is a summary of a randomized controlled trial of a metropolitan police department's body-worn camera program. It is useful in class to talk about the design of the experiment and also to talk about how they state their results. Their results are given as confidence intervals for differences.