Chair of Research Methodology and Statistics in Psychology

While undergraduate courses in the context of the Psychology Bachelor's degree programme impart common quantitative methods, the Psychology with Focus on Clinical Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy Science Master's programme conveys complex multivariate methods. The Chair also provides students with methodological advice on preparing theses and research papers.

Teaching in the area of "Research Methodology and Statistics" enables students to acquire applied statistical skills and experience on the basis of a scientifically sound understanding of theory and methods. The core curriculum comprises a series of consecutive courses on statistics: for the bachelor's degree in the first two semesters, and for the master's degree in the second semester. At the same time, concrete data analyses using pertinent software (e.g. SPSS) deepen the theoretically acquired knowledge and implement it in practice.

Our research focuses on:

• Health economic aspects of psychotherapy research
• Evaluation of creative therapeutic procedures (artistic therapies)
• Mathematical modeling of mental disease processes (dynamic systems)
• Statistical methods for the detection of regression and placebo effects
• Subjective probability and evidence
•  Mental representation of statistical-mathematical concepts

One of the Chair’s key tasks is to establish a service structure for methodological support of research projects at the School of Psychology and Psychotherapy, Witten/Herdecke University. The aim is to strengthen the University’s research focus on "Integrative and Personalized Health Care" and to advance it methodologically. The Chair therefore pursues collaborations with neighboring disciplines, such as medicine, dentistry and nursing science. We may also help establish contacts to competent persons for methodological aspects of "Integrative and Personalized Health Care" from the planning phase to joint publication. Moreover, we supervise bachelor's and master's theses, and provide methodological support for conducting studies.

Students may write a Bachelor's or Master's thesis on the following topics:
Quantification of verbal probabilities (project: "Are you sure?"):

• Which determinants (tolerance of uncertainty, age, disease) affect the quantification of verbal probabilities?
• Systematic review of the quantification of verbal probabilities: Which results are already available?
• Development of an online questionnaire or an app with graphical elements to quantify verbal probabilities (programming skills required)

Evaluation of artistic therapies (sculpting, painting, theatre therapy,...)

Evaluation of movement interventions (juggling, acrobatics, fitness,...) with regard to mental health:

• Systematic reviews, surveys, studies

Topics relating to music and psychology:

• Music therapy, orchestral musicians, choir singing

Chess psychology:

• Does the solving of chess puzzles depend on speccifi contexts (physical exertion, music, ...)? Experience in playing chess as a tournament player is helpful, but not necessary. Survey participants can be recruited from chess clubs.

Use of new media (avatars, SecondLife) in psychotherapy and psychiatry:

• Systematic reviews and surveys

Statistical and mathematical models and concepts in psychology:

• Similarities between inter-rater reliability coefficients
• Differential Equations in Psychology
• Mathematical models of time perception
• Modeling of subjective evidence
• Regression toward the mean in psychology
• Application of the Mee & Chua algorithm on uncontrolled studies

Students can implement projects in teams, i.e. two or three if they comply with the rules and regulations applicable to bachelor´s theses.

The Chair of Research Methodology and Statistics in Psychology runs a Statistics Lab in order to methodologically support research projects. The laboratory provides pertinent evaluation software for specific data analyses (e.g. R, SPSS, HLM, NCSS, PASS, M-Plus, AMOS, ReviewManager, EQR or SigmaPlot). User workstations are available in the Statistics Lab for all procedures. The lab is not only accessible to staff and students of the School of Psychology and Psychotherapy. On request, all UW/H faculties and schools may use it for methodical support.