Do students who get low grades only in research methods need the same help as students who get low grades in all topics in psychology?

Abstract

Some psychology students achieve high grades in all classes except for research methods (RM). Previous research has usually treated low levels of achievement in RM as a unitary phenomenon, without reference to the grades the student is achieving in other subjects. The present internet survey explored preferences for learning RM in 140 psychology students. Students were categorised as: those who achieved higher grades for RM than other subjects in psychology; those whose grades for RM were equal to their grades for other subjects; and those who had lower grades for RM than other subjects. An interesting finding was that whereas wanting to see more humour in RM teaching was significantly associated with lower RM grades, wanting more visual ids in teaching RM was significantly associated with low grades only for RM. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to explaining low achievement specific to RM.