Students’ Changing Understanding of Psychological Evidence: Integrating Evidence Evaluation in Psychology Instruction

Abstract

This study extends the prevailing emphasis on evidence in the natural sciences by offering a novel fine-grained analysis of how undergraduate students evaluate psychological evidence. The study employs the Grasp of Evidence framework to explore psychology students' epistemic ideals and processes for evaluating popular psychological evidence, and examines how these change following a course that included collaborative evidence evaluation and design tasks. Analyses of pre and post evidence evaluation assessments reveal three key shifts in students’ grasp of evidence: in perception of the sources of psychological knowledge, in views of scientific objectivity, and in definitions of psychological phenomena.