Psychology 2011 1997 Lab Week 8 Summary

These pages are demonstration pages of mixed mode deli very for an on-campus course. The curriculum and course structure has changed substantially for 1998, but these pages have been retained here as an example of a particular use of the Web in teaching.

SPSS TUTORIAL

The exercise sheets provided were fairly straight forward and most of you were able to work through them very comfortably. At the end of the tutorial it is anticipated that you are knowledgeable and confident on the following;

You understand
- the SPSS environment
- the relationship between the data file (.sav) and the output window (.lst)
- that you need to save each separately
You can DEFINE, LABEL, and indicating what TYPE of variables are in use.
You know how to SUMMARISE the data by using the DESCRIPTIVES and EXPLORE commands.
You can conduct DEPENDENT and INDEPENDENT SAMPLES T-TESTS using the COMPARE MEANS option under the STATISTICS drop down menu and DEFINE GROUPS commands appropriately.
You are able to digest and read accurately the output from the above commands, AND assimiliate that information in reporting relevant p values, upon which we base our psychological interpretations.

Drugs and Behaviour Laboratory

The aims of this lab in a general sense were to get you to begin to interact and discuss psychological issues on the general area of drugs and behaviour (our framework), and to start utilising your lab dairy as a place for reflective comments on issues raised in the labs.

The four questions posed as starting points for this broad topic, upon which we asked you to write "gut", initial reactions in your lab diaries were;

Should marijuana be de-criminalised/legalised? Consider the effects of legal drugs such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotene in responding.

How is drug use/addiction/dependency portrayed by the media and popular culture?

If heroin was not illegal, what do you see as the problems of recreational heroin use?

What makes a "hard" drug hard?

These questions were then addressed in small groups, and discussions roamed far and wide encompassing many issues. The class discussions that followed summaries by our spokes-people from each group were informative, lively and entertaining. I hope the same level of enthusiasm and thoughtfulness is maintained throughout the next few weeks when discussing these issues on the newsgroups.

Discussion of these questions should take place on the monash.psych.psy2011.labs newsgroup. The questions have been posted there so we should now see the contributions flowing and good lively debate ensuing.

Currently it is taking approximately 10 minutes for posts to appear on the newsgroup new mail listing, so please be patient. We do not want the same post appearing a number of times. Use the Reload button to check your message after a 10 minute period.

Please remember the "rules" governing newsgroup discussion, for a reminder on newsgroup "netiquette" refer to the Psychology Computer Lab Manual - USENET Newsgroups section.

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