College Student Perceptions of Psychology as a Science as a Function of Psychology Course Enrollment

Abstract College students (N = 297) completed a perceptions of psychology as a science survey before and after completion of psychology courses. Psychology as a science scores increased significantly from the beginning to the end of the research methods courses, but scores in introductory psychology courses did not change and scores for students in communications psychology courses decreased. Implications for program development are discussed. Keywords: college student, psychology, science, attitudes ********** Many psychologists consider themselves scientists and use the scientific method to conduct experiments of human behavior. However, sometimes convincing scientists in the 'hard' sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics of the scientific merit of psychological research has been a challenge. Recently, there has been a trend for university departments to change their names and course titles from Psychology to Psychological Science, or other variations which highlight the term science. In 2006, the American Psychological Society voted to change its name to the Association for Psychological Science, thus emphasizing its scientific mission. But what do students think about the scientific nature of the field of psychology? And what factors influence these perceptions? Perceptions of psychology as a science (PAS) differ world-wide. A study utilizing the PAS Scale (Friedrich, 1996) was designed to investigate a sample of undergraduates from four universities in Brazil. Fifty-four percent of students strongly agreed that psychology is a science, and 26% strongly agreed that psychological research is necessary and that training in methodology is important (Morales, Abramson, Nain, Nelson, & Bartoszeck, 2005). In an Australian sample, students perceived psychology as a science within a few weeks of program commencement and their academic development influenced their perceptions of psychology as a science (Provost et al., 2011). In the U.S., non-majors, including natural science and education majors, perceive psychology as a soft-science or helping profession. However, psychology majors perceive the major to be a hard-science (Bartels, Hinds, Glass, & Ryan, 2009; Gervasio, Wendorf, & Yoder, 2010). Previous research supports the idea that completion of psychological statistical courses and research method courses is associated with an increase in scientific thinking (Amsel, Baird, & Ashley, 2011; Holmes & Beins, 2009; Friedrich & Camac, 2003). The current investigation was designed to examine how student perceptions of psychology as a science (Friedrich, 1996) would change upon completion of introductory and research methods psychology courses. We predicted that students would report an increase in PAS scores from the beginning to the end of all psychology courses, but a larger increase would be reported in research methods courses which emphasize and/or require research experiences. Method Participants College students (N = 297) enrolled in 12 psychology courses over three semesters from two universities participated in our study. The majority of students were enrolled in a medium size public university in the Southeastern United States (84.2%), with the remaining attending a branch campus of a large public university in the Midwestern United States. The average participant age was 21.13 years (SD = 3.41). Students were enrolled in introductory psychology (INTRO; n = 47), scientific communication in psychology (COMM; n = 116), research methods (RM; n = 59), and a senior thesis course (ST; n = 75). Consistent with the composition of the major, the majority of students were women (81.1%). While a variety of majors were represented, approximately 80% of the sample was psychology majors. There were 12.8% freshmen, 17.5% sophomores, 31.3% juniors, 36.3% seniors, and 2.1% "other." The racial distribution of the sample included 67. …