This book is for psychology and behavioral science majors and minors who are taking their first undergraduate course in research methods. These courses have titles such as Research Methods, Psychological Research, and Experimental Psychology. The students are typically sophomores and juniors, although some schools teach this course at the senior level. The teaching package will consist of:

• Textbook. 400-500 pages, 12 chapters and 4 appendixes
  
• McGraw-Hill Online Learning Center website
  
• Instructors Manual
  
• Electronic test bank
  
• PowerPoint slides
  

The textbook's organization and particularly its style help it stand out among the texts that are available for this course. Foundational material on the nature of science, psychological research, ethics, measurement, and statistical methods are covered in the first part of the book. The heart of the text is the chapters on research designs. These are the designs that psychologists and other behavioral scientists use widely today. These chapters focus on between-subject and within-subject designs, the identification and control of extraneous variables, ANOVA, and the interpretation and explication of results. The book concludes with an innovative two-chapter portion addressing the nuts and bolts of research and its presentation by undergraduates.

The chapters in this book can be taught in orders different from the one we use. For courses in which students develop a written prospectus or carry out a data-gathering project and write it up, chapter 11 can be assigned early and referred to throughout the course. Chapter 10, Observational, Qualitative, and Small-N Research, which employs designs that seldom use random assignment, can be taught without loss of continuity before chapter 7, Design I: Between-Subjects Designs, which introduces random assignment. A course might begin with chapter 2, Research in Psychology, saving chapter 1, Science, to serve as an overview at the end of the course. Two chapters that should be taught in order are chapters 7 and 8, Design I and Design II.

College and university curricula differ in the sequencing of the research methods (RM) and statistics courses. Traditionally, statistics is taught first. However, some curricula employ a combined RM/statistics course, while others teach RM first, followed by statistics. Obviously, no single textbook is appropriate for all three models, but this one accommodates the first two models above.

Students who have had statistics or are taking it concurrently will find that chapter 5 (Data Exploration and Description) and chapter 6 (Statistical Tests) provide a welcome review of descriptive and inferential statistics. One-way ANOVA and factorial ANOVA are covered in chapter 9 (Complex Designs). For curricula with a combined RM/statistics course, chapter 5 and chapter 6 serve as an introduction to statistics, but will likely need to be supplemented with additional problems. These problems can be taken from our Test Bank or other ancillary materials

This book is about the scientific methods and scientific thinking that psychologists use to investigate behavior and mental processes. By understanding and applying these methods, you can collect data and arrive at valid conclusions about subjects that pique your interest. In addition, you will be able to make suggestions to others and even detect flaws in research. Some of these flaws are common in popular thinking. This book has a number of features that are designed to help you accomplish your goals for this course. The first on our list is perhaps the most important.

• We address readers as beginning researchers poised to make discoveries and solve problems, rather than as students whose task is to learn definitions and lists. Indeed, several examples that are used extensively are based on published undergraduate research.
  
• Chapters begin with a short summary and a list of objectives to orient students to the chapter; after finishing the chapter, the objectives serve as a review list.
  
• All glossary words and phrases are printed in bold where they are introduced. Their definitions are printed in sidebars and in alphabetical order in Appendix D.
  
• As the material in a chapter unfolds, Stop & Think boxes pose questions to the student. The answers to these questions are in the text that follows. These questions help keep students engaged by creating a style that alternates between didactic and Socratic.
  
• In The Know boxes let students in on the kind of inside information that a professor might offer in conversations outside the classroom.
  
• The two kinds of exercises at the end of each chapter, Chapter Review and Thinking Critically about Research, provide opportunities for recall of the material in the chapter and for applying it to new situations. Answers to all exercise are provided.
  
• The Know for Sure terms at the end of the chapter and the pages where they are defined serve as an aid for review for a test.
  
• A reference to a Table or Figure in bold-face type in the text means to examine the table or figure at that point. The bold type makes it easy to return to your place.
  
• The final two chapters on conducting and reporting research provide a detailed guide for courses or curricula in which a data-gathering project is required.
  

One caution is in order about our conversational writing style - it is not the style you should use for your report of an empirical study. Our style is designed to be engaging and to be sure that important and difficult points are understood. For example, we are deliberately redundant about some of these points. To write up empirical research, however, we recommend (and many others in Psychology recommend) APA style. APA style has a rigid organization and a terse, constrained style. Of course, the purpose of journal articles is to convey a lot of information in very little space to readers who are quite familiar with background information and with APA style. A textbook, on the other hand, has lots more space to work with and an audience that varies. We hope you like our style, but we don't recommend it (and don't use it ourselves) for journal articles.

Our partial list of acknowledgements of those who have helped us with this book include

Charles Brewer, the 1996 American Psychological Association Teacher of the Year who read the entire manuscript and provided reams of helpful comments,

Elena Yakunina, a student at Southern Arkansas University who worked all the problems at the end of the chapters and made suggestions,
Some 25 anonymous reviewers who read all or part of the manuscript

Our colleagues and students at Hendrix College and Southern Arkansas University who provided references, criticism, corrections, and encouragement during this project.

Our colleagues at Ouachita Baptist University, Loretta McGregor, Randall Wight, and Randy Smith, who provided us with a place half way between our two institutions where we could meet and work on our manuscript.

Hendrix College and Southern Arkansas University whose support was absolutely necessary for the completion of this book. We are grateful to our respective institutions.

In ways to numerous to mention, our families contributed to this long-running project. They deserve much more than a mention in a preface.

One of the big goals of this book and your course is that you will get much better at analyzing conclusions that are based on data. Because there is so much data out there in life as we all know it, we expect that your improved skills will be quite useful in many endeavors, especially those you engage in after your research methods course.