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Lesson Learned: Using Clinical Examples for Teaching Research Methods

Undergraduate students enrolled in their first statistics course were randomly assigned to read one of two mini-lessons about methodological confounds. In one, a therapist investigated a variable that might affect depression; in the other, a researcher investigated a variable that might affect memory. As hypothesised, the clinical lesson produced significantly higher interest in the lesson topic and significantly greater interest in the research described. Participants in the clinical lesson had a higher desire to do research in this area, though this difference only approached significance. Knowledge of the topic (number of correctly answered multiple-choice items) was not significantly different between conditions. These results suggest that placing methodological concepts in clinical contexts may provide a fruitful approach for improving the frequently reported negative student attitudes toward statistics and research methods.