By Jamie Chamberlin
Monitor staff

Stuart Tentoni, PhD, despised statistics in college. So when faced with a tedious statistics research project, he put his own spin on it. Tentoni went to the horse races, kept a running tally of which starting gate the winner came from and found a significant difference between the gates. He stayed a few extra days betting on gates instead of horses, and paid for not only his trip, but for his tuition and fees for the next semester.

Tentoni, clinical professor of educational psychology and coordinator of counseling service at the University of Wisconsin?Milwaukee?s Norris Student Health Center, believes all beginning researchers can benefit from what he learned?that a student is likely to work harder, learn more and stay motivated if he or she appreciates the research topic.

Telling that story is one way that Tentoni arouses his students? thinking about the research projects they need to complete to graduate. Other educators maintain that helping students feel less intimidated by the process, getting them started on their research early and better informing them about research guidelines will help students get more out of their research experience and better prepare them for graduate school.

Own your topic
Choice of a research topic can make or break students? overall research success, Tentoni says. Students whose curiosity directs their topic choice have an advantage over students that select a topic to impress a committee or adviser, he says.

To focus their interests, Tentoni advises that students:

? Be creative. Boldly select a topic, he says. If a topic is interesting to you, it?s worth investigating. For example, at APA?s 1982 Annual Convention, a psychologist presented a study on a topic some people might not take seriously: ?The relationship between jelly beans and adult personality.? Inspired by former President Ronald Reagan?s fondness of jelly beans, the study examined the relationship between personality and jelly bean color preference. The study?and its author?went on to receive national and international attention.

? Look for topics in the environment. A good research topic can surface in conversation and in the media and can be found by looking at APA journals or convention programs to see what?s not being covered.

Tentoni picked his own dissertation topic in the early 70s during the Watergate hearings, when he saw former White House aide Alexander Butterfield testify about the communication system that was set up to record conversations in the Oval Office. Butterfield?s testimony gave Tentoni the idea of using electronic communications equipment to improve his practicum supervision. With such equipment, he could listen in on counseling sessions from outside the room, giving his students immediate and continual feedback during each session.

? Feel passionate about your topic. If you don?t, ?it is almost a certainty that you will procrastinate on the project and not even complete it,? says Tentoni.

Tentoni is concerned that students often complete all the requirements for a doctorate except their dissertation because of unmanageable topics and motivation problems. By choosing a topic they?re excited about and working more closely with faculty advisers, he says, many of these students would have completed their doctoral studies.

Research ethics
One of the first steps in getting students interested in research is to introduce it in introductory psychology courses, says Celia Fisher, PhD, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York.

Fisher, chair of APA?s Ethics Code Task Force, initiates students to research design by integrating ethics into the introductory psychology curriculum. She uses a research ethics workbook?which she developed using a grant she received from the National Science Foundation?to teach students about the importance of ethics throughout the research process. The workbook summarizes six classic studies cited in many introductory textbooks?John Watson?s study on conditioned emotional reactions is one example. Students are challenged to use critical thinking to solve each study?s ethical dilemmas and to answer specific ethical questions, such as, ?Who will benefit from this study?the participant, science or society??

The goal of the exercise is to encourage students to think about the constant tension between the investigator?s responsibility to generate well-controlled, valid data and his or her responsibility to respect the welfare of the research participants. There are no correct answers to the workbook?s questions, notes Fisher. The objective is for students to understand the quandary and articulate astute answers, she says.

?This type of training sets the stage at the introductory level,? she says. ?Its important that students do not see ethics as an add on, but as a seminal part of research design.? Fisher has studied the effectiveness of the curriculum at Fordham and at Loyola University in Chicago and found students who received the in-depth ethics training were better able to identify ethical issues than students who were briefly exposed to ethics through traditional introductory psychology curricula. Those exposed to the wider training also expressed more interest in psychological science and research ethics.

The unknown
Fear of research, possibly stemming from the instructor?s misrepresentation of the research process, may discourage students from pursuing psychology to the graduate level, says Judy Primavera, PhD, professor of psychology at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn.

By their junior year, many psychology majors say they hate research, that they no longer want to go to graduate school or, worse, that they have switched their major because of research requirements, she says.

Primavera senses that psychology faculty often confound the research process by exposing students only to tightly controlled methodologies. Students start to view research as too removed from the real world experiences that drew them to the discipline in the first place, she says.

?If the spoken or unspoken rule in class is that they should be doing research as fledglings as if they were a seasoned researcher, many will become discouraged and see ?good? research as something out of their reach,? she says.

Primavera suggests faculty take a less rigid approach to research and help students appreciate the fact that ordinary questions about ordinary behavior qualifies as good research. Emphasizing the research process rather than the outcome will make students more comfortable with trying different ideas, she says. And helping students understand the meaning of all their data will prompt students to generate further research questions, even if they fail to obtain significant results, she says.

She also emphasizes the importance of introducing the research process early so students are well prepared rather than overwhelmed by their junior and senior year. In 1997, Primavera?s freshman and sophomore psychology classes conducted a pilot research project in which they asked young children questions about daily life. Her students became enthusiastic veteran researchers, she says, and were eager to continue the research in their junior and senior years.

Making it personal
The biggest turnoff for students conducting research is that they don?t see the personal side, says Leonard Jason, PhD, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago. He tries to show his students that the process is more than working with numbers and managing people.

?Once they hook into that personal side they have a very different experience as an undergraduate,? he says.

Jason is advising a student research group investigating the special needs of people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Jason took the students to a CFS self-help meeting to observe the human side of the disorder before they began their background research on CFS.

?It was a profound experience for them,? he reports, adding that they were motivated by meeting people with CFS.

Jason then assigned four student volunteers to meet on a regular basis with a CFS ?buddy??a person who has the condition. The students? goal is to identify the most effective ways to communicate with people who have CFS.

Helping students take their first step toward a career is probably the most rewarding thing he does, Jason says.

?All academics should see that helping promising students earn the credentials to take their next step is part of their mission,? says Jason.

The ethics workbook and instructor?s manual are available free of charge. Contact: Celia Fisher, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, (718) 817-3793.

Understanding institutional review

Success at undergraduate research takes more than choosing the right topic and pursuing it ethically: Students also need a strong understanding of the rules and guidelines of student research, as developed by the institutional review board (IRB) at each college or university.

Knowing how the IRB works gives students an advantage once they move on to graduate school research, their dissertations and eventually grant proposals. At each school, the IRB familiarizes students with federal guidelines and enhances students? research skills. The IRB is mainly concerned with three aspects of student research: informed consent, specification of risks and benefits, and participants selection, says Janet F. Gillespie, PhD, a member of the review board and an assistant professor of psychology at the State University of New York?College at Brockport.

The IRB requires students to guarantee confidentiality and to develop a clear informed-consent form for each research participant to complete. The board also needs assurance that coercion?such as extra credit or payment?is not being used to recruit participants. The board also must see a debriefing statement to see if any deception is used. The IRB chair requires a copy of the project description, a copy of the informed consent form, surveys and interviews, and signatures from the students? adviser and department chair. Students should include only variables that clearly relate to the primary research question, or the IRB board may reject some aspects of the study, she says.

Without proper mentoring, many students misunderstand these IRB procedures, Gillespie says. They may give the board too little information or submit a study that is too broadly defined. Often they leave insufficient time for the board to complete an evaluation of a proposal. Faculty can help students understand and navigate the process, she says. To avoid a research setback, students need to contact the IRB chair and set up a meeting early, she advises. If the IRB chair is a faculty member who has a full plate of teaching responsibilities, that person?s availability may be limited, she says, but often the IRB chair is a more accessible staff member solely responsible to the review board.

An IRB board generally will take one of three actions with a research proposal, Gillespie says:

? Surveys on ?harmless topics? and noninteractive observation of public behavior are reviewed immediately and answered quickly.

? Interviews and self-report measures that do not involve deception are reviewed by several IRB members, who usually give feedback in a week.

? Research on sensitive topics, such as drug use or sexuality, or that targets special populations such as children, requires a meeting of all members of the IRB, and the board may request the student researcher?s attendance.

Gillespie says students should acquire plenty of practice with IRB approval, because each experience will help fine-tune future research proposals.

?Become knowledgeable about the IRB process early in your training,? she says. ?Get into the IRB process and work with them as a colleague and an equal.?

?Jamie Chamberlin