Bonus Article for Chapter 7 of Researchdesign explained

 

 

You may want to assign the firstfour pages of the following article:

Schmitt, D.P., & Shackelford, T. K. (2003). Nifty ways to leave your lover: Thetactics people use to entice and disguise the process of mate poaching. Personalityand Social Psychology Bulletin,  29, 1018-1035.

 

The authors use a survey design tostudy an interesting topic: the strategies people who are in relationships useto invite another person to try to have a relationship with them. In addition,the article is easy for your students to obtain (students who buy the book canget it by using the Infotrac® subscription that comes with Researchdesign explained), and the section of thearticle that we recommend assigning (pages 1018-1021) is short and relativelyeasy for students to read (to make it even easier to read, give students Table1).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1

Helping Students Understand the Article

Section

 Tips, Comments, and Problem Areas

Abstract

temporal context: comparing short term relationships versus long term relationships

 

nexus: center, hub, place where things connect

 

Introduction

extradyadic: involving more than two people

 

attuned: sensitive to, aware of, tuned into

 

qualitative context … : type of relationship

Study 1: The psychology of mate poaching enticement

sex and temporal context … : whether the genders are different in their strategies and whether the strategies are different if the goal is a short term relationship versus a long term relationship.

 

act nomination procedure: People are asked to write down (nominate) examples of behaviors (act) that might be performed in a particular situation (in this case, trying to form a new relationship)

Preliminary Study Results and discussion:

culled: gathered together after sifting out the less desirable items

 

culled from: selected from

 

 

Table 1

Cronbach’s a; Cronbach’s alpha: an index (that can range from 0 to 1) of the degree to which there is consistency between how participants answer one question on the measure with how the participant will answer other questions on the measure (see page 104). A high alpha (above .80) indicates that the subtest is internally consistent: people agreeing with one item on a subtest item tend to agree with other items on that same subtest.

 

           

 


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