Editing Interdisciplinary Graduate Methods (Spring 2024) (section)

= Course Overview and Learning Objectives =

This course is an introduction to research methods in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. 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. 

As will be discussed in more detail below, the course will be focused around guest lectures from experts in different aspects of research design from around Purdue. These lectures will typically be on Tuesdays, with a more discussion-based class centered on the same topics held on Thursdays. 

I will consider this class a complete success if, at the end, every student can:

* Develop an understanding of the fundamentals of interdisciplinary science and research design across the social behavioral and health sciences.
* Develop practical skills for establishing interdisciplinary collaboration, conducting research in collaborative teams.
* Learn best practices for ethical, rigorous, and reproducible research.
* Gain exposure to a variety of research approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, exploratory, and confirmatory approaches.
* Be able to apply a research method to a topic relevant to your own research.
* Improve critical thinking ability in research design and methods.
* Improve written and verbal communication of research methods.