Saturday, December 30, 2006

Online Communities: Wikipedia

One of my research interests is the creation, care and feeding of Internet communities. One of my colleagues, Tommy Milford, and I have pursued this topic since 1996. He has created some successful online communities in a social work context. I have been involved in the Southwestern Psychological Association's efforts to move to online system for managing the association's business including program submissions, membership, and communication. So, we have had some practical experience with online communities and their benefits and problems.

The recent success of Wikipedia, then, is all the more impressive to us. When we wrote Using the Internet for Social Science Research and Practice in 1996, we had to search hard to find useful sites within the social science disciplines in order to compile a little more than 200 pages, about half of those pages listing websites. If we rewrote that book today, it would easily run over a thousand pages. Also, we would find Wikipedia pages near the top of all of our searches. That phenomenon, the high Google pagerank of Wikipedia pages, is fairly new. Impressive, too, is the wide variety of topics covered by Wikipedia.

Here's my idea. I'm thinking about starting a new Wikipedia topic: Postwar changing points in the American automotive industry. I have not checked to see if this topic is already on Wikipedia, but I will. I got the idea while riding around in my new-to-me 1976 Chevrolet pick up truck. It is the latest in a long line of Chevy/GMC trucks that I have owned over the years. I've owned a '49 GMC, '50 GMC, '52 Chevy, and a '55 Chevy (first series). A not-yet-running '52 Ford F-1 currently resides in our carport. Unlike my earlier trucks, the '76 has air conditioning, power steering, automatic transmission, two-speed wipers, and a big V-8. (It does not have a cupholder.) The Wikipedia article would argue that immediately after World War II, American automakers basically released warmed over prewar models. Gradually, they improved their designs. In 1955, for example, Chevrolet released a modern V-8. From that point on, more innovations followed including electric windshield wipers, air conditioning, power steering, and so on.

The data in this case would come from monitoring the article. How long before it is modified? How many readers? Not to mention adding another topic to Wikipedia.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Golf and Memory

Walked the front nine at Magnolia Country Club today. I've been playing golf for 3.5 years now and I don't keep score most times; I like to replay my bad shots. Of the many things I think about on the golf course one is how much I remember about each round. For instance, I could easily and accurately report every shot I took today. On the other hand, I would have a lot of trouble accurately describing the rest of my day. Memory for golf could be a fun topic to research.

Here's what I did on the first hole. I did not warm up or take any practice swings. I hit my tee shot with a driver. It rose to about 40 feet, flew about 200 yards, faded just a little, and landed about 90 yds from the pin. It was an ideal first shot. I had hopes of dropping a high 9 iron onto the green at this point. Although my second shot traveled about 90 yards, I bladed it and it went low and to right of the hole about 20 yards and landed on the wrong side of the cart path. My short game is deficient (as you will soon see) but I decided to hit a lob wedge anyway. My third shot traveled all of 10 ft, as did my fourth and fifth. I picked up my ball and marched to the second tee. By the end of nine holes, I decided to practice my short game more. Now, my lob wedge is residing behind the seat of my truck, ready for practice at any time.

The point is that I could provide this level of detail for all nine holes I played today. Could I do it as accurately a week from now? What about if I played a few more rounds in the next few days? Would they retroactively interfere with my memory of today's round? (As I write, I'm trying to remember how I played the first hole the round before today. It's much fuzzier. So, I predict that my most accurate memories will be for the latest round and that intervening rounds will negatively affect recall. I'm ready to experiment.)

Time to quit blogging and to get back to drafting the Instructor's Manual. Tonight's topic is within-subjects designs, which, appropriately enough, fits nicely with my golf research :-) Let me practice my new line, "Honey, I've got to collect data at the golf course again."

Welcome to Research Methods in Psychology!

I teach research methods in psychology and started this blog to help my students. I'm new to blogging so I don't know how it will all turn out. But, I'm hopeful good things will emerge.

I'm spending a lot of time preparing an Instructor's Manual for a new book: Research Methods in Psychology: Ideas, Techniques, and Reports that will be published January 11, 2007 by McGraw-Hill.

Chris Spatz and I have been working on this project since 1999. In fact, I counted nearly 4000 pages of e-mail between him and I since then. Maybe I'll post it all (NO just kidding).

My idea for this blog is that it will serve as a home for students who are interested in learning about research methods.