Psychology 532: Psychological Effects of the Internet

@gomcilwraithkatharineblog

Term Project

150 posts

Final Reflection of the Course

I completed reflections of each individual unit, but I want to also complete a final reflection of the course as a whole. For anyone seeing this blog who did not take Psychology 532, I 100% RECOMMEND IT!!

I was skeptical when I first started because the work load seemed slightly overwhelming. But the flexible structure of the course allowed me to complete all of the assignments when it worked best for me. While there were a lot of assignments, there were also a lot of points, so a missed assignment or two was really not a big deal.

I could not have asked for a more smoothly run summer course to take, and I am so glad that I decided to take this as a depth course. One thing I am curious about though is how this course worked during the normal school year. I think the fact that this course was completely online really enriched my learning about the internet and I could not imagine taking it in a classroom setting.

Thank you for looking through my Psychology 532 blog! I hope you either had a good review of the course we just finished, or if you had not taken the course, I hope you will now consider it! Enjoy what’s rest of the summer and good luck with whatever your future holds!

Reflection of Unit 15

I can’t believe the last unit of our course has already come! It seems like just week I was writing my introduction post and now I am writing my farewell. I really like how we were instructed to make farewell posts because it made the class feel like it had come full circle. It was nice to say goodbye to the people I had gotten to know through group chats and/or discussion posts.

Learning about past predictions really sparked my interest and made me think about what developments the future may hold. I will definitely be more invested in the news about technological advances and I plan to keep up with the predictions I’ve read about.

The last two assignments of this course consist of posting our final project and looking over the final projects others came up with. I was very excited to see what others had come up with because we had so much freedom with this project. Everyone did a great job!

I wish everyone the best of luck in their future endeavors, and thank you all for a great class!

longshankstumblarian

Well, finals are just about done for everyone by now…Let the summer fun begin!!!

inspirational-quotes-and-more

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

Winnie the Pooh (via inspirational-quotes-and-more)

The world is changing faster than you might realize.

For the second assignment of our very last unit, we discussed past technological predictions and made some of our own. I am not a very tech savvy person so the thought of people actually predicting technologies future decades will have is absolutely amazing to me. The fact that some of them were so spot on too; it’s just crazy!

I made a couple predictions regarding Siri and holograms, but this article includes some technological predictions that I think are pretty darn cool. I am very curious to see where our world is at technologically in a decade and a half.

We discussed the predictions that were correct, but what about the ones that were not. Is there still a chance for any of them?

Futurists can dish out some exciting -- and downright scary -- visions for the future of machines and science. Here are 10 of them in the realm of technology.

Reflection of Unit 14

I think this was a pretty important unit because online research has really been making advances in the past few years. My freshman year I completed numerous online surveys for psychology extra credit, and now I have some idea of the process it took to create the surveys and then score them. I’m fairly positive I will have to create another survey again in my years of schooling so I will be sure to remember the tips I learned through the first assignment.

The third assignment really shows how much data can be gathered through the internet whether it is a structured study or not. Like one article showed, Facebook likes can determine the popularity for a given sports team and people’s search histories can be indicators of a contagious disease that may be spreading.

There are really no limitations to what the internet can do and this unit along with previous units have really shown me that over the course of this class.

So this is a link to the short survey I created to study whether Internet-based surveys gather the same quality of data as non-Internet based surveys and if there was a preference for one over the other. I used a combination of multiple choice, true or false, and free response questions to gather demographic information and people’s opinions on the two types of surveys.

It was actually sort of fun experimenting with the different styles of questions and analyzing the results. I will say though that it was pretty challenging coming up with well worded questions that would help me get the information I was looking for without leading the respondent too much.

The results I got from this study were pretty much what I expected. The results indicated that there is a great preference for internet-based surveys. Despite slight skepticism on the reliability of information gathered this way, most respondents felt that information gathered via the internet is as or more reliable than information gathered through non-internet based forms. While the results may be what I expected, I think further research is definitely necessary to fully support this hypothesis.

Can social media reporting of restaurant-related illnesses help public health authorities identify and prevent outbreaks? A New York City public health experiment done in cooperation with Yelp says "yes."

This assignment again presented me with the opportunity to learn about another way the internet is helping change the way things work. I never would have thought in a million years that food poisoning could be tracked through restaurant reviews. Not only was I surprised by the fact that this was possible, but I was also incredibly surprised by the prevalence of food-borne illness that was indicated through these reviews. The study I read found that 56% of the reviews researched described an event consistent with foodborne illness. That is so high! The study also reports that cases of food-borne illness are also going unreported so that number is even higher!

Overall though, this study goes to show how useful online reviews can be beyond simply helping someone make a decision on where to eat. I also think with more research in this area, these types of situations will be able to be avoided.

Unit 14 Assignment 2

For this assignment we were instructed to read the abstracts of 11 studies and then categorize them into three or four groups. i grouped the 11 studies into three different categories: 1) Type of Test, 2) Effects of Age, and 3) Behavioral Results. This process was not too challenging because the point of each study was pretty clear.

We were then asked to discuss any of the results that surprised us. What I found the most surprising was that there was no significant difference between in-person labs and online labs. Online labs lack a type of hands on learning that I think is really essential in one’s education so I was very surprised by this. In regards to the rest of the results, I was not very surprised by the findings.

The first assignment for this unit was sort of preparation for the last assignment. That being said I did learn a few things about creating surveys I had not previously known. If I am remembering correctly, the survey I made for this class was the first survey i had ever actually created so it was no surprise to me that I really had no idea how much work went into the formulation of the questions. It’s important that the wording of the question is just right as not to confuse or lead the respondents to any answer. It is also important that the answers cover every base while not overlapping.

I also was unaware of the process of analyzing open-ended questions, but most specifically the process of creating categories. I’ve always taken surveys but never been in charge of documenting the responses, so I’ve never been exposed to this process. But after completing a survey and analyzing it myself, I can see how this makes the process more effective and so much easier.

While I thought a lot of the tips and points were common sense, it was a bit of a challenge actually keeping them all in mind while creating my own online survey.

Survio is a quick and easy online survey tool. It is intuitive, easy to use and packed with powerful features anyone can operate. In fact, you can create a survey in just a few clicks!

Reflection of Unit 13

My interests in psychology and my motivations behind the psychology major are much more clinical than anything else, so I really enjoyed this unit. But even more than just the fact that the unit was about clinical psychology, I liked that the therapies we learned about were almost entirely online! I’ve never heard or read about anything like those so it was a really interesting concept for me.

The first assignment showcased not only how effective internet-based interventions can be, but also how wide a variety of problems they can treat: from binge-eating disorder to toddler sleep disturbances. It was incredibly interesting to me.

I enjoyed how we returned to the concept of meta-analysis again because like I mentioned in that unit, that was something I had struggled with in my statistics course. So having the ability to come back and cover it one more time was really helpful; it also allowed me to test the knowledge I had retained and showed me how much I really had learned about these types of studies.

The fourth assignment of this unit really made me curious about what the future holds in regards to internet addiction. While the article we read presented multiple reasons as to why this is dissimilar to a substance addiction, I feel that in a decade or so, some of those reasons may not be relevant. I recall that one of the reasons was that internet addiction does not physically effect a person, but I strongly believe that it has the ability to. If someone gets so invested in the internet or some aspect of it, that could affect the way they eat, sleep, etc. which could greatly impact their health. So I’m very, very curious to see what comes of that in the future!

Overall this was a fun unit, getting to practice some amateur CBT and learning about computerized forms of treatment. I’m excited to see the different advances that this area of psychology makes over the next few decades!

Reflection of Unit 13

My interests in psychology and my motivations behind the psychology major are much more clinical than anything else, so I really enjoyed this unit. But even more than just the fact that the unit was about clinical psychology, I liked that the therapies we learned about were almost entirely online! I’ve never heard or read about anything like those so it was a really interesting concept for me.

The first assignment showcased not only how effective internet-based interventions can be, but also how wide a variety of problems they can treat: from binge-eating disorder to toddler sleep disturbances. It was incredibly interesting to me.

I enjoyed how we returned to the concept of meta-analysis again because like I mentioned in that unit, that was something I had struggled with in my statistics course. So having the ability to come back and cover it one more time was really helpful; it also allowed me to test the knowledge I had retained and showed me how much I really had learned about these types of studies.

The fourth assignment of this unit really made me curious about what the future holds in regards to internet addiction. While the article we read presented multiple reasons as to why this is dissimilar to a substance addiction, I feel that in a decade or so, some of those reasons may not be relevant. I recall that one of the reasons was that internet addiction does not physically effect a person, but I strongly believe that it has the ability to. If someone gets so invested in the internet or some aspect of it, that could affect the way they eat, sleep, etc. which could greatly impact their health. So I’m very, very curious to see what comes of that in the future!

Overall this was a fun unit, getting to practice some amateur CBT and learning about computerized forms of treatment. I’m excited to see the different advances that this area of psychology makes over the next few decades!

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