Psychology Assessment Report Summaries

2008-2009

• Goal 1: Knowledge Base in Psychology
• Students in our Senior Seminar course took the Psychology Area Concentration Achievement Test (ACAT), a nationally normed, multiple-choice test which includes questions from 10 different topic areas in psychology. We have seen encouraging improvement on this goal this year, although we still have several areas in which to improve. Students met our benchmarks for both of the sets of Cluster courses that are part of our major requirements: (Learning, Neuroscience, and Cognition) and (Personality, Social, Health, and Abnormal) as well as for Lifespan Development. Students performed below benchmark standards on knowledge about psychological perspectives, research methods, statistics, and social psychology, though we are starting to see improvement on psychological perspectives as more students take the now-required P459 History and Systems course. For both biological bases and social psychology, which are offered every other year, we have noted consistent patterns of performance relating to the number of students who have taken the class and when those classes are offered relative to the ACAT (e.g., students do better if they have taken the courses nearer the time of the ACAT). For statistics, we plan to investigate whether students are taking statistics earlier than they used to (resulting in a loss of information), and for both statistics and research methods we plan to look for ways we can help students carry these areas of knowledge through their other coursework, and to review the ACAT questions to determine their correspondence to our goals for the statistics and research methods classes. 

• Goal 5: Ethics in Psychology, Outcomes 1 (Recognize necessity of having ethical standards/acting ethically), 4 (Understand what it means to be ethical in practice), and 5 (Apply ethical principles in either research or practice).
• Students in our P390 Helping Skills course helped us pilot-test a new measurement instrument for the ethics goal by taking a short multiple-choice quiz designed to evaluate the three ethics learning outcomes identified above.  All students achieved at least a 70% on this quiz; performance met benchmarks for Outcomes 4 and 5, but not for Outcome 1 (most likely because there were only two items on the quiz for this outcome). Students seem to come away from this course generally appreciating the need for ethical standards, and equipped to recognize practices which violate ethical standards (though there was some confusion about which specific standards were violated by particular actions given in example-type questions). This preliminary data indicates need to add more items to the quiz for Outcome 1 and illustrates the importance of discussing specific ethical standard violations in detail during the course and having students pay attention to that detail.

• Goal 2: Research Methods, Outcome 3 Design Basic Studies to Address Psychological Questions
• Students in our P211 Research Methods course design and conduct a survey research project as a class and then each student writes an individual research report based on the project.  Students perform best on writing a research question, purpose, or objective and on writing a hypothesis appropriate to the research method (though they still do not meet benchmark performance criteria for the latter). Students particularly struggle with clearly specifying the hypothesis, writing a hypothesis that is appropriate to the literature review, and writing clear operational definitions, we have seen improvement in making the hypothesis appropriate to the literature review despite revisions to course assignments and course content emphasis. We have made as many changes as we can to the course without eliminating time devoted to other course content (which would be inappropriate) or increasing the number of credit hours (thus increasing instruction time). We plan to assess this same outcome at an advanced level via the research proposals students write in Senior Seminar to see if performance improves after students have matured as scholars and have been exposed to additional psychology coursework and more practice reading research in psychology. 

• Goal 8: Career Development & Planning, Outcome 1 Demonstrate Basic Knowledge of Careers in Psychology
• Students in P199 Planning Your Psychology Career take a short quiz that directly assesses students’ knowledge of career paths as well as what is needed to either prepare for Bachelor’s level jobs or prepare for graduate education for those careers that require additional credentials. Students who complete P199 do very well (approx. 89%) on this quiz; we are pleased with achievement on this outcome, though students still struggle with understanding the difference between Ph.D. and Psy.D. degrees. This year, the psychology faculty agreed to shift P199 from a course required for all majors, to a highly recommended, but optional course. This was in response to several issues (e.g., students taking the course late in their program when it seemed less relevant for them, a lot of effort for a one credit course, high levels of non-attendance for a significant number of students).

2007-2008

Goal 1: Knowledge Base in Psychology Students in our Senior Seminar course took the Psychology Area Concentration Achievement Test (ACAT), a nationally normed, multiple-choice test which includes questions from 10 different topic areas in psychology. Students met our benchmark for performance on knowledge of content areas represented by our course cluster of P325 Learning, P326 Neuroscience, and P335 Cognition and came close to meeting our benchmark for the course cluster of P319 Personality, P320 Social, P303 Health Psychology, and P324 Abnormal. However, students performed below benchmark standards on knowledge about psychological perspectives, research methods, statistics, and lifespan development. We started a new requirement (beginning with newly admitted students in Fall, 2006) that students take a P459 History and Systems course which should soon start paying off in improved performance on psychological perspectives (none of this year’s test-takers had that course) and may help improve performance on lifespan development, methods, and statistics as the course includes review of a number of topics in psychology. The performance on methods and statistics represents a decline in performance from the previous year. Goal 2: Research Methods, Outcome 3 Design Basic Studies to Address Psychological Questions Students in our P211 Research Methods course design and conduct a survey research project as a class and then each student writes an individual research report based on the project. Students performed best on writing a research question appropriate to the research method. Students continue to struggle with achieving benchmark performance on clearly specifying the hypothesis, writing a hypothesis that is both appropriate to the literature review and appropriate to the method, and writing clear operational definitions, we have seen improvement in making the hypothesis appropriate to the literature review (primarily because we have added an assignment that focuses specifically on this issue. Goal 8: Career Development & Planning, Outcome 1 Demonstrate Basic Knowledge of Careers in Psychology This year, we piloted a new assessment tool (a short quiz) that directly assesses students’ knowledge of career paths and what is needed to either prepare for jobs one can get with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology or what is needed to prepare for graduate education for those career paths that require additional credentials. This quiz was given to students in our one-credit-hour P199 Planning Your Psychology Career course. Results indicate that by the end of the course, students have a very strong understanding of employment issues related to psychology. Students’ knowledge about IU Kokomo faculty recommendations regarding taking practica vs. independent research, and about differences between psychiatrists and psychologists and between Ph.D. vs. Psy.D. graduate degrees needs improvement. Senior Exit Survey Results Students in our Senior Seminar course complete a survey about their experiences in the psychology program. Students continue to report strengths of the program as being: the faculty and variety of courses as well as writing and learning APA style. Students also reported that the program was very or extremely effective in helping them learn content of psychology, critical thinking, and application of concepts. Link to full Psychology Assessment Report for 2007-2008

2006-2007

Goal 1: Knowledge Base in Psychology Students in our Senior Seminar course took the Psychology Area Concentration Achievement Test (ACAT), a nationally normed, multiple-choice test which includes questions from 10 different topic areas in psychology. Because we had only four students in the course this year, we combined this year’s data with that from the previous year’s students. Students met our benchmark for performance on knowledge of content areas represented by our P211 Research Methods and our K300 Statistics courses (very close to meeting benchmark) as well as our benchmarks for knowledge of content areas from our course cluster of P325 Learning, P326 Neuroscience, and P335 Cognition and from our course cluster of P319 Personality, P320 Social, P303 Health Psychology, and P324 Abnormal. However, students performed below benchmark standards on knowledge about psychological perspectives and lifespan development. We started a new requirement (beginning with newly admitted students in Fall, 2006) that students take a P459 History and Systems course which we hope will help improve performance on psychological perspectives. Low performance on lifespan development content may be due to the fact that this 200-level course is taken very early in their program by most psychology majors. Goal 2: Research Methods, Outcome 3 Design Basic Studies to Address Psychological Questions Students in our P211 Research Methods course design and conduct a survey research project as a class and then each student writes an individual research report based on the project. Students continue to perform best on writing a research question and a hypothesis appropriate to the research method. Students continue to struggle with achieving benchmark performance on clearly specifying the hypothesis, writing the literature review, writing a hypothesis that is appropriate to the literature review, and writing clear operational definitions. However, we made changes to the course this year regarding choices of project topics, instruction on writing the review, and a new assignment on making the hypothesis match the literature review, and we have seen corresponding improvements in performance. Overall pattern of performance improved by 30% from last year. Goal 8: Career Development & Planning, Outcome 1 Demonstrate Basic Knowledge of Careers in Psychology Students in our one-credit-hour P199 Planning Your Psychology Career course self-reported improvements from beginning to end of semester in their familiarity with types of jobs available at the psychology Bachelor’s degree level and their familiarity with the types of careers that graduates from our program have attained. Senior Exit Survey Results Students in our Senior Seminar course complete a survey about their experiences in the psychology program. Students reported that the program was very or extremely effective in helping them learn content of psychology, including research methods and ethics, and in helping them improve their critical thinking and communication skills. Link to full Assessment Report for 2006-2007

2005-2006

Goal 1: Knowledge Base ACAT results

Students in our Senior Seminar course took the Psychology Area Concentration Achievement Test. Students scored above our 50 th percentile benchmark in the following topic areas of psychology: abnormal, clinical/counseling, developmental, experimental design, human learning/cognition, physiological, social, and statistics. Students scored below our 50 th percentile benchmark in history and systems (a course our students currently are not required to take) and in personality (also not a required course, plus our course places less emphasis on names of researchers and theorists than does the test). Based on these results, we have changed major requirements such that all students will take a history and systems course.

Goal 2: Research Methods, Outcome 3
Design Basic Studies to Address Psychological Questions results

Our students performed best in the areas of writing a research question or purpose and writing a hypothesis that is appropriate to the research method used. In an effort to improve students’ ability to write an appropriate literature review and to write a hypothesis that is appropriate to that literature review, we have modified an assignment so they now have to think and write about the relationship between the background literature and their hypotheses early enough in the semester to get feedback from the instructor before they write their research reports. These results are based on the survey research reports written by students in our Methods of Experimental Psychology classes.

Career Planning and Development results

Students taking our Becoming a Psychology Major course reported that from beginning to end of the semester, they improved their ability to gather information about psychology careers, increased their knowledge of what those careers entail, and increased their interest in earning a minor. Self-assessment assignments reveal students are aware that procrastination will keep them from achieving their goals, but they are NOT aware of how to improve. In the short-term, we plan to focus a class period on time management, with the possibility of a workshop on time management and procrastination avoidance in a future semester.

Senior Exit Survey results

The majority of students taking this survey reported that the psychology program was very or extremely helpful in helping them learn the content of psychology, including research methods, and in helping them develop their critical thinking. Students reported that the psychology program’s greatest strength is the high quality of the faculty.

Link to full Assessment Report for 2005-2006