This article was downloaded by: [McMaster University]On: 15 October 2014, At: 10:28Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

Educational GerontologyPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uedg20

LEARNING ABOUT OLDERLEARNERS: TRAININGUNDERGRADUATES ASRESEARCHERSCameron J. Camp a & Cecile Brookover aa Department of Psychology , University of NewOrleans , New Orleans, Louisiana, USAPublished online: 03 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Cameron J. Camp & Cecile Brookover (1997) LEARNING ABOUTOLDER LEARNERS: TRAINING UNDERGRADUATES AS RESEARCHERS, EducationalGerontology, 23:8, 809-813, DOI: 10.1080/0360127970230805

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0360127970230805

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views ofthe authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor andFrancis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, inrelation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McM

aste

r U

nive

rsity

] at

10:

28 1

5 O

ctob

er 2

014

LEARNING ABOUT OLDER LEARNERS: TRAININGUNDERGRADUATES AS RESEARCHERS

Cameron J. CampCecile Brookover

Department of Psychology, University of New Orleans,New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Students in an experimental design class were trained in survey research andgerontological research issues through a class project that involved interviewingolder adults and resulted in a term paper written as a journal manuscript. Variousother aspects of the course, including statistical analysis, library searches, informedconsent issues, and dealing with sexist and ageist language, were integrated intothis class project. Benefits of this approach to teaching experimental design are dis-cussed.

Students in an undergraduate psychology course in experimentaldesign and methods at the University of New Orleans were given expe-rience with survey research methods and with topics in the psychologyof aging. This course was required of all psychology majors before theycould enroll in either independent-study or senior-level psychologycourses. Students were introduced to survey research methods andissues in course lectures. In addition, they were exposed to issues ofquasi-experimental design within the context of developmentalresearch (e.g., because age cannot be randomly assigned, cross-sec-tional studies suffer from the confounding of age effects and cohorteffects).

Students then were given a two-part instrument consisting of ademographic questionnaire and a self-report measure of motivationalfactors influencing decisions to take part in adult education, the Edu-cation Participation Scale (EPS) (Boshier & Riddell, 1978). This instru-ment had been used by researchers at the University of New Orleansto examine reasons why older adults selected specific courses to attendin a multi-institutional education program for older adults (Brookover& O'Hanlon, 1994; O'Hanlon, Camp, & Osofsky, 1995). In previoussemesters, other instruments were used in the course including a mea-sure of possible selves (Hooker, 1992; O'Hanlon, Camp, & Blanchard-Fields, 1993) and a measure of everyday problem solving (Blanchard-

Address correspondence to Dr. Cameron J. Camp, Myers Research Institute, 27100Cedar Road, Beachwood, OH 44122-1156, USA.

Educational Gerontology, 23:809-813, 1997 809Copyright © 1997 Taylor & Francis

0360-1277/97 $12.00 + .00

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McM

aste

r U

nive

rsity

] at

10:

28 1

5 O

ctob

er 2

014

810 C. J. CAMP AND C. BROOKOVER

Fields & Camp, 1990; Cornelius & Caspi, 1987). The survey items werereviewed, and survey instrument construction was discussed using theEPS as a point of reference. Issues of factorial invariance across agegroups were covered through describing the constructs underlying thesubscales and how items may or may not measure the same constructat different age levels, depending on the content of particular items.

Next, students did literature searches in the areas measured by theEPS. All students were to find three articles on the topic and to writetheir own abstracts for the articles found. These were collected, graded(with feedback for improving the abstract), retyped, and pooled as ageneral reference tool for use by all students. Additionally, studentswere required to turn in printouts documenting their successful use ofcomputer-based software for their literature search. Earlier in thesemester, University librarians had demonstrated how to access anduse this software.

Informed consent and the ethics of research were covered in class-room lectures. Students were given an informed consent form that hadpassed the University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) and that cor-responded with National Institutes of Health guidelines. The form'sstructure and content were discussed in class, along with a discussionof the IRB review process. In addition, the topic of debriefing after astudy was covered. This discussion led to other issues encounteredduring the administration of surveys (e.g., unwillingness of respon-dents to answer specific items, extreme verbosity, social desirability asa contaminant, and other quality control procedures). Students werepresented examples of appropriate interviewing behavior through role-playing exercises in class. All students had to demonstrate adequateinterviewing technique before they were allowed to work with researchparticipants.

Once past this hurdle, students recruited and interviewed adults ofdifferent ages. In the semester using the survey on motivational/edu-cational factors, students were to interview four persons over the age of55 years. In other semesters, students interviewed two younger, twomiddle-aged, and two older adults. Problems or unusual circumstancesencountered by students during interviews were discussed in class asa general didactic strategy.

Once surveys were completed, students scored questionnaires togain experience in data coding, derivation of subscales, reverse codingof specific items, and so forth. These data then were pooled so that theycould undergo statistical analysis (usually multivariate analysis ofvariance [MANOVA], along with post-hoc analyses). Finally, at the endof the semester, students wrote an article (i.e., term paper) based on the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McM

aste

r U

nive

rsity

] at

10:

28 1

5 O

ctob

er 2

014

UNDERGRADUATES AS RESEARCHERS 811

survey study. American Psychological Association (APA) writing stylewas to used, and the Publication of the American Psychological Associ-ation (APA) Manual (3rd edition) was a required text for the course.

Abstracts collected by the class were used as the basis for the intro-duction. The method section described the total sample of participantssurveyed by the class, as well as the methods, materials, and design ofthe study that they had conducted and discussed. The results sectiondescribed the analyses conducted on the total data base. Students wererequired to use figures or tables as part of their results sections. Theconclusions discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the study, aswell as suggestions for the next study that should be conducted in thisline of research. The term paper accounted for 20% of a student's coursegrade.

The term paper represented the culmination of a series of homeworkassignments and class projects designed to train students in profes-sionally reporting the results of research. One homework assignment,for example, consisted of correcting a poorly written, mistake-filledreference list from a fictitious student's paper. Others involved cor-recting the title page from a fictitious manuscript, deleting sexist lan-guage from a piece of prose and substituting appropriate languageaccording to APA guidelines, and so forth. Ageist language was thefocus of a similar exercise, using Schaie (1993) as the basis for identi-fying inappropriate phrases as well as substituting appropriate lan-guage. All homework assignments were graded on a pass/fail basis andwere resubmitted continually until reaching a criterion of 90% correct.These assignments then could be used as templates for writing theterm paper.

In a statistical homework assignment, students were given a dataset to analyze, which consisted of two groups of numbers, each grouphaving ten scores. These data were analyzed using SPSS-MANOVA(SPSS, Chicago, Illinois), first treating the data set as if it representeda between-subjects design (two groups, ten participants per group),then treating the same data set as if it were a within-subjects design(one group often persons tested twice each). The data were given a con-text: Data points represented reading comprehension scores for a groupof fourth graders. In one study, half of a class was given an interventionand half was not. In another study, an entire class was tested on aMonday, given an intervention on Wednesday, and retested that Friday.Students were to analyze these data using a between-groups analysisof variance (ANOVA) and then do it again as a repeated-measuresANOVA. Each student had a unique data set. For each student, a con-stant was added to the original 20 scores to create his or her own data

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McM

aste

r U

nive

rsity

] at

10:

28 1

5 O

ctob

er 2

014

812 C. J . CAMP AND C. BROOKOVER

set. Each student was assigned a different constant. All students had toreport the results and conclusions of both analyses and had to includeboth a tabular and a graphic representation of the outcome of eachanalysis.

Several benefits were derived from this exercise. Students learnedhow to create APA-style manuscript tables and figures, including cre-ating figure-caption pages. These then could be used as examples fortheir term papers. Students also found out that although each had aunique mean for their two groups' scores, all had the same standarddeviations, sums of squares, and F-test values (if they had entered andanalyzed their data correctly). This led to discussions about variance,constants, and the general linear model. The data were picked in sucha way that the results of the between-subjects analysis would not reachstatistical significance, while the repeated-measures analysis was sig-nificant^ < .001. On examination of their tables and figures for the twoanalyses conducted on these data, it became obvious that the same fig-ures and tables had been generated for both (the same means and stan-dard deviations were generated for the two sets of scores, regardless ofhow these numbers were analyzed using different types of ANOVAs).This led to discussions about why repeated-measures analyses arelikely to have higher power than between-subjects analyses. This wasreinforced by examining the summary tables in the printouts, in whichthe sum-of-squares effect was the same in both analyses, although thesum-of-squares used for the error term was much smaller for therepeated-measures analysis.

Students also had conducted individual research projects which hadbeen presented as an APA-style poster session (Gore & Camp, 1987).This had given them experience in analyzing data, generating graphsand tables, etc. Most wanted to claim that they were studying theoret-ical constructs of cause and effect (Cook & Campbell, 1979). As a result,they tried to create studies using multiple outcome measures repre-senting a single underlying construct. When they went to their pre-vious homework assignment for guidance in setting up their analyses,they used the SPSS-MANOVA routine again. Suddenly, new informa-tion about Wilke's lambda and so forth appeared in their output thathad not been there during univariate analyses. Students then broughttheir printouts to the instructor or his teaching assistant, who did abrief tutorial on the basics of MANOVA. Usually enough studentsrequested that the topic be covered again that a class period wasdevoted to describing MANOVA and its outcomes. By the time studentswere ready to compare the results of different age groups on a numberof subscale scores in reporting the survey study's results, they werefamiliar with conducting and interpreting MANOVA analyses.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McM

aste

r U

nive

rsity

] at

10:

28 1

5 O

ctob

er 2

014

UNDERGRADUATES AS RESEARCHERS 813

In summary, the survey study conducted by students of this experi-mental design class was an integral part of the course. It enabled stu-dents to acquire new skills such as interviewing adults of differentages, as well as integrating other facets of the course such as manu-script writing and statistical analysis. The term paper served as thecapstone of the course and insured that students were prepared to takeindependent study and senior-level writing courses. Many studentswent on to take independent study courses in the area of gerontology,as well as additional coursework in the psychology of aging and relatedareas.

REFERENCES

Boshier, R., & Riddell, G. (1978). Education participation scale factor structurefor older adults. Adult Education, 28, 165-175.

Blanchard-Fields, F., & Camp, C. J. (1990). Affect, individual differences, andreal world problem solving across the adult life span. In T. M. Hess (Ed.),Aging and cognition: Knowledge organization and utilization (pp. 461-497).New York: Elsevier Science.

Brookover, B. C, & O'Hanlon, A. M. (1994, November). Motivation for partici-pation in an adult education program. Poster presented at the annualmeeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Atlanta, GA.

Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (1979). Quasi-experimentation: Design andanalysis issues for field studies. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Cornelius, S. W., & Caspi, A. (1987). Everyday problem solving in adulthood andold age. Psychology and Aging, 2, 144-153.

Gore, P., & Camp, C. J. (1987). A radical poster session. Teaching of Psychology,14, 243-244.

Hooker, K. (1992). Possible selves and health behaviors in later life. Journal ofAging and Health, 4, 390-411.

O'Hanlon, A. M., Camp, C. J., & Blanchard-Fields, F. H. (1993, August). Knowl-edge and attitudes about aging: Results from students' research. Paper pre-sented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association,Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

O'Hanlon, A. M., Camp, C. J., & Osofsky, H. J. (1995). A multi-institutional pro-gram for older learners. Educational Gerontology, 21, 543-554.

Schaie, K. W. (1993). Ageist language in psychological research American Psy-chologist, 48, 49-51.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

McM

aste

r U

nive

rsity

] at

10:

28 1

5 O

ctob

er 2

014