1.3: Why are you taking this course?
- Page ID
- 240695
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You probably signed up for this course because your counselor said that you had to, but didn't really know what it was about. The very simplist way to describe what this class is about is that you'll learn how to understand, evaluate, and interpret other people's research, plus conduct high quality research yourself. To do this, you'll learn about different ways to measure behavior and mental process, to read and interpret research articles to identify if variables cause changes in outcomes, and learn about the ethics of conducting research.
But, why is this required for your future career?
Why
Why must you take a class to learn about research when your major is in the social sciences (probably), and you just want to help people? There are several answers to that. The one that is probably most compelling to you right now is:
Understanding research will help make you better in your future career.
Whether you become a therapist, a social worker, a police officer, a nurse, or run a business, you should read research from your field, and understand the results. To make decisions in your career, you’ll need to understand and apply the results of research by others in your field. Understanding the research process and being able to interpret research results will help you make decisions based on evidence. What you will learn in this class can help you show that your program (or your decision) is better than the alternatives.
What you might not know right now, but will know when you start in a career field in the social sciences, is that much of what you will be doing is documenting what you did, and how it worked. In other words, you will be writing technical reports to describe your clients based on their different groups. That leads us to a second major reason that you have to take this course:
You will need to report evidence to show that what you are doing helps your clients/patients/customers.
This relates to the first reason because knowing what works and what doesn’t will help you figure out how to be more successful in the future. It also turns out that the organizations that fund workers in many helping fields only want to continue funding programs and services that are effectives. It will be much easier to get funding if you understand the best way to organize and present your results. This evidence comes from collecting, analyzing, and reporting data from your program.
Finally, some of you will fall in love with research, and will become a researcher for a living! This isn’t a reason why you have to take the course, but it is a happy accident for those of you who want to help people, but tend to be more logical rather than emotional (like Dr. MO!).