Methodology
II - 2
The departments were contacted during the months of January through March of 1998. We received 241 completed surveys. Five of these were duplicates and were deleted. The resulting final group consisted of 236 psychology departments. The positions of the respondents in their respective departments ranged from professors of laboratory courses and individuals responsible for computer labs to heads of the departments.
Survey items were composed of statements meant to assess the computer and software related facilities of psychology departments throughout the United States. In particular, the need for and ability to access PsychExps was investigated. A complete listing of the survey items can be found in Appendix A. Two forms of the survey were used to differentiate between institutions currently using psychology laboratories and those which were not currently using psychology laboratories. Which form of the survey was completed was based on the answer to the initial question,
Does your psychology curriculum include one or more courses that are considered to be "laboratory courses," where by laboratory course we mean a course with a primary mission of teaching students to use research designs to collect data that the students then analyze and report for course credit?