Research in Psychology

The department requires that you participate in 5 hours of outside research. To fulfill this requirement, you have 2 options.

Option 1:

You can participate in up to 5 hours of departmental research project. You must be 18 YEARS OF AGE to volunteer for research projects. Ongoing faculty research projects will be posted online at the PSPM.

This online system is called PSPM. Your ID for this system is your OleMiss ID number (without the leading zero) and your password is made from your initials (first letter of your first name and first letter of your last name in lower case) PLUS the first 4 digits of your ID number, again without the leading zero.

For example, if your name is:

Jane Doe

OleMiss ID: 010103423

Then:

ID = 10103423

Password = jd1010

If you sign up for a particular time, you are expected to show up at that time or you will lose a research credit point. If you need to cancel a sign up time, you must do so 24 hours in advance. These research hours are required, and they are 2% for EACH hour that you participate.

If you have any problems accessing the PSPM system, please direct your questions to the system administrator, Dr. Carol Gohm, cgohm@olemiss.edu or talk to her during her office hours. Her office is Peabody 310E.

Option 2:

You may elect to write a 2 page summary of a research article (to earn 3 points). If you are not able to participate in any research project (for example, you are not yet 18 or busy with work), you can complete Option 2 twice, to earn all 5 points. For Option 2, choose an article of interest to you (on any psychology related topic) from a professional psychology journal by doing a computer search on psycINFO.

• Get on olemiss.edu website.
• Click on Libraries.
• Click on Articles and Databases.
• Click on the “P”, then select PsycINFO.
• At the top of the screen, type in your search topic in the box.
• Refine your search by clicking on the Linked Full Text, under Publication Type, select All Journals, and click on the box that selects “English” as the language.
• Click on Search.
• From the search results, look for only those peer reviewed journal articles that report on formal research studies (that have subjects in an experiment). Book Reviews or Letters to the Editor do not count as research studies.
• To print an abstract (summary) of the study, click on the title. Print 5 abstracts as port of this assignment.
• To print an article, click on Linked Full Text. Print out the article you plan to summarize, and hand it in with your written summary.
• To earn 3 points, you must print out 5 abstracts of actual studies, print your choosen full text journal article, and write a brief summary of the major sections of the article, results in a 2 page paper.
• If you fail to follow instructions, you will not earn the full 3 points for this option.