APSC 5184: Research Methods for Animal Behaviorists
| Concentration: Applied Animal Behavior and Welfare Credits: 3 graduate credits |
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Description
Research methods and data analysis. Designs relevant to applied animal behavior. Considerations for choosing a research design, hypothesis testing, choosing and defining variables, and collection methods. Single-subject research designs, including reversal, multiple baseline, multielement, and parametric. Data-based research decisions. Group designs, including factorial, nested, and parametric. Visual representation and analysis of data. Descriptive statistics and introduction to basic parametric and nonparametric statistical tests.
Learning Objectives
- Having successfully completed this course, the student will be able to:
- Compare and contrast inductive and deductive reasoning using examples from animal behavior;
- Identify appropriate independent and dependent variables and measures of those variables for use in animal behavior research;
- Construct objective behavioral definitions focused on animal behavior;
- Execute appropriate data collection techniques for animal behavior research;
- Compare and contrast different single-subject designs for use in animal behavior research and choose appropriate design for a given research question;
- Compare and contrast different group-designs for use in animal behavior research and choose appropriate design for a given research question;
- Compare and contrast the pros and cons of different research designs for use in animal behavior research
- Represent data in a visually effective manner;
- Analyze single-subject design data using visual analysis;
- Calculate descriptive statistics from various measures of animal behavior;
- Discriminate when and how to use basic parametric and nonparametric statistics using animal behavior example
Prequisites and Corequisites
Graduate Standing