加州州立大學北嶺分校

Program Description

CSUN’S graduate program in Psychological Science provides rigorous training in advanced statistical methods, research methods and design, and theory in psychology for students who plan to pursue a Ph.D. in Psychology in a research-focused program. The program is comprised of faculty who are active researchers in their fields, and who are dedicated to training and mentoring students who plan to pursue academic and/or research careers in an array of basic and applied areas of psychology. The application requires applicants to indicate which faculty member they would be interested in working with as their thesis research advisor. A faculty member in the Psychological Science program must agree to accept a student into his or her research lab before the department can accept a student into the program option even if the applicant meets all of the other admission requirements. It is therefore advised that applicants review faculty research interests prior to submitting an application.

Student Learning Outcomes

Students will:

Apply key concepts, principles and overarching themes in psychology to written work and oral presentation in multiple theoretical domains. Students will demonstrate a working knowledge of psychology’s content domains by distinguishing between theoretical principles as they differentially apply to each content domain (e.g., principles of group interaction processes as they apply to social, cognitive and developmental psychological phenomena). Students will illustrate the application of theoretical principles to their own novel research agendas.

Use scientific reasoning to interpret psychological phenomena in published empirical literature as well as in their own work, by evaluating the evidence-based explanations for observed results both in written work and oral presentation. Students will evaluate published psychological research and define key terms.

Complete multiple quantitative and/or qualitative data analytic projects using outside data sets, and will demonstrate mastery of analytic approaches in analyzing their thesis or project data set.

Design innovative research that solves novel problems and conduct and interpret these studies alongside their research advisor. Students theses or projects will consider sociocultural factors as relevant, and students will critically consider these factors in their classroom work.

Demonstrate ethical standards to evaluate psychological science and practice in submitting institutional research review board (IRB) applications to review the ethical parameters of their original research, and will illustrate examples of ethical applications in classroom discussions of research methods and published research. Students will build interpersonal relationships with at least three faculty members who will serve on their thesis or project committee, and demonstrate values that build community at local, national and global levels through their independent research work.

Demonstrate effective writing across written classroom assignments (discussion posts, response papers and research papers), in both the quality of their written expression and the sophistication of their idea presentation. Students will complete oral presentations of their work in classroom and professional (e.g., conference) settings. Students will integrate their work with existing peer-reviewed scholarship through completion of their thesis or project, conference presentations and/or publications.