The Opening of Basic Experimental Method Course

Mind, Brain and Behavior Laboratory (MBB Laboratory) Faculty of Psychology UGM conduct Basic Experiment Method Course online. The event was held for 4 days, start on Monday, December 7 to Thursday, December 10, 2020.

There are 160 participants who take the course, the majority are from DKI Jakarta and DIY and most of them are academics (students and lecturer from public and private university), and also employees from government and private sector.

The event started with opening speech from Prof. Kwartarini Wahyu Yuniarti, MMedSc., Ph.D., Vice Dean for Research, Community Service, and Partnership as representative from the dean. She also thanked MBB Laboratory and Doctor of Psychological Science Program for holding this event.

Furthermore, Galang Lufityanto, M.Psi, Ph.D as the head of the MBB Laboratory conveyed the agenda for the next 3 days, which are presentations from the speakers, and on the third and fourth days participants will be divided into small groups in order to discuss and practice further about designing experimental research and analyzing the data.

After the speech, the first presentation was started with Prof. Dr. Thomas Dicky Hastjarjo. He delivered material about Basic Concepts and Principles In Experimental Research. Furthermore, explain about introduction to the methods and basic principles of experimentation, the advantages and disadvantages of experimental methods, things that need to be prepared in order to conduct an experiment and the mental set of an experimental researcher, which is important for the researcher to always be able to be critical in during the process of the research and analyzing the data. He also emphasized that the causality relationship is the key in experimental research, where the causes are purely the result from manipulation or treatment that given by the researcher.

Later on, after the first session at 1.30 – 3.00 PM, the course continued to the second session at 3.30 – 5.00 PM with the topic called Research Variables, Research Variables and Confounding Variables delivered by Galang Lufityanto, M.Psi, Ph.D. He conveyed the concept of variables, the importance of operational definitions in experimental research, scaling in measurement, the concept of reliability in experiments and various kinds of confounding variables. Besides, he also provided some applicable examples of the concept of causality in experimental research.

Through this activity, committee hoped that this can increase the knowledge by sharing experiences from the presenters, so the participants will be able to capture the implicit and explicit knowledge, in order to be become more advance in experimental research.