As a Psychology Major, one requirement I had at PLU is to take STATS 232 (introduction to statistics for psychology) and PSYCH 242 (advanced statistics for psychology). These two courses give a very solid groundwork for psychology students to look into the world of statistics associated with psychological research. Introduction to statistics covered learning the basics of statistical calculations and research methods. However in advanced statistics, we got to design our own study and conduct it during the semester.
For my advance statistics class, I teamed up with two other students and we did our research on this topic: Gender Stereotypes and Math Computation. Our main goal was to see if people's perspective on gender stereotypes based on math affected how the different genders performed while taking a math test. We conducted this experiment by recruiting other psychology students through an online program where students could participate in the study in exchange for class credit given by the respective professors. Students then were asked to attend their designated timeslot and participate in the study. After conducting our experiments and wrote our research papers, we got to attend the Psychology Spring Research Conference held at PLU, where PSYCH 242 students and Capstone students got to present the findings from their study. This was a great experience, and my peers and I got to talk to students, parents, and professors about our study while also getting to check out what other students researched.
If you are thinking about being a psychology major or even interested in doing research associated with psychology, I recommend you take these classes! Though they were not easy classes, I definitely got a lot out of them, and it was a really good experience. Since I will be doing research for one of my psychology professors next school year, I have definitely benefitted from these classes, and have gotten good real-life experience! Also, let me know if you have any questions about the classes and I will be more than happy to help you out :)
