Psych majors...

[grinder]

grinder...if a person goes into the psych field expecting to be filthy rich they are doing it fr the wrong reason. For me...helping others is my passion in life and always has been.

Ironic aint it: The very people that could have diverted that nut at Virginia Tech to a psych hospital and saved all those lives get paid chump change, even though they have 6 and 8 years of college. That’s f’d up.

Click a button in a spreadsheet and move fund A to column B, repeat as necessary, and you make $300,000 dollars a year.

This is no fvcking sh*t.

Oak: I have had more careers/jobs in huge variety than most here and I’m telling you that ultimately you will need some coinage. If you want to help society, then by all means volunteer or donate. Cause yer gonna need the tax write-off with that big salary…:yes:

Wylde: Sheeze, whatdayagot a trust fund or something? You got as many snot-nosed kids as me and they aint cheap.

 

[seanchai]

The fact is...you are foolish if you trust statistics. I've worked for lots of non-profits who only got necessary funding by statistically proving there was a large need for their services. People who gather statistics have already decided prior to gathering them WHAT they want the statistics to show. So...they target populations most likely to provide the statistics they are looking for.

Statistics are used to "prove" something...and are just as easy to manipulate as silly putty. That is a fact...regardless of how much you don't want to believe it.

I don't see how you can expect to get a PhD in either Psychology or Sociology while rejecting statistics. That's what separates the PhD from the BA (and that's not even the case in Sociology).

 

[oakraiderz2]

Ironic aint it: The very people that could have diverted that nut at Virginia Tech to a psych hospital and saved all those lives get paid chump change, even though they have 6 and 8 years of college. That’s f’d up.

Click a button in a spreadsheet and move fund A to column B, repeat as necessary, and you make $300,000 dollars a year.

This is no fvcking sh*t.

Oak: I have had more careers/jobs in huge variety than most here and I’m telling you that ultimately you will need some coinage. If you want to help society, then by all means volunteer or donate. Cause yer gonna need the tax write-off with that big salary…:yes:

Wylde: Sheeze, whatdayagot a trust fund or something? You got as many snot-nosed kids as me and they aint cheap.

By no means do i want to be a shrink or counsel people. At first i was interested in psych because i was shy. As ive matured and crawled out of my shell, ive become more interested in the brain and all that good stuff.

 

[Wyldfire]

Ironic aint it: The very people that could have diverted that nut at Virginia Tech to a psych hospital and saved all those lives get paid chump change, even though they have 6 and 8 years of college. That’s f’d up.

Click a button in a spreadsheet and move fund A to column B, repeat as necessary, and you make $300,000 dollars a year.

This is no fvcking sh*t.

Oak: I have had more careers/jobs in huge variety than most here and I’m telling you that ultimately you will need some coinage. If you want to help society, then by all means volunteer or donate. Cause yer gonna need the tax write-off with that big salary…:yes:

Wylde: Sheeze, whatdayagot a trust fund or something? You got as many snot-nosed kids as me and they aint cheap.

lol...no trust fund. I had to be creative when I left my ex husband in order for us to survive. It was important to me not to put my kids in daycare, so I found ways to make money from home. I've done home decor parties, built electronics (piece work), babysat, made and sold jewelry, built web pages...just to name a few. I work part time as an administrative assistant for a non-profit...which I do right from home most of the time, do some web page stuff and go to school full time. I just do what I have to in order to provide for my family as long as it's legal and doesn't go against my values. I've also waitressed a lot...and I always made over $30 an hour doing that. Anytime I need a bit more money I usually go get a part time waitress job at an upscale restaurant.

 

[Wyldfire]

I don't see how you can expect to get a PhD in either Psychology or Sociology while rejecting statistics. That's what separates the PhD from the BA (and that's not even the case in Sociology).

I reject the tendency to encourage survivors of Domestic Violence to embrace victimhood that one of my professors is pushing too...and am still getting an A in her class.

Jung and Erikson rejected Freud's psychosexual stages but went on to be quite proficient in their field.

I'm not saying all statistics are bad...only that many are manipulated to fit a predetermined result. Placing a lot of faith in statistics is foolish and leaves you with a huge blind spot and threatens true objectivity.

 

[doctoroxygen]

A Ph.D. is a research degree, and research in psychology is done using statistical analyses, so I think you're going to have a hard time finding a Ph.D. program that you won't be using statistics in. Furthermore, statistics aren't used to prove anything, ever. They're used to show that the likelihood of something happening by chance is very small, as PlasSurg (you're welcome for your new awesome nickname, BTW ) said. Trust me, if you actually could make statistics say anything you wanted, my last year in the lab would've been MUCH MUCH easier.

The histories of statistics and psychology are completely intertwined, and we don't have the modern forms of either without the other.

 

[Wyldfire]

:crackup: did you even graduate high school?


The whole point of confidence intervals and rejecting the null hypothesis is to show that you CANT use statistics to prove/disprove anything and everything. Especially if you run tests correctly and without BIAS.

If you use double blind placebo studies with p<.05, there's no way you can make up statistics to say whatever it is you want. That's why this exists.

When dealing with populations of people you most certainly can manipulate the results to come out to show what it is you want them to show. It's done every day. For instance...a few years back there was a national study done on teens and drug use. They singled out my oldest daughter because she was 15 at the time, she lived in a single mother household, my income was pretty low the previous year because I had a high risk pregnancy with my youngest child and couldn't work. The interviewer asked a ton of biased questions to make sure that my daughter fit the profile of a teenager assumed most likely to use drugs.

Statistics involving PEOPLE can be, and usually are manipulated by making sure everyone in the "random sample" fits into a very specific profile. Every agency I ever worked at did the exact same thing in order to qualify for funding. I spoke with the executive director at the first place I saw it happening and asked why the stats gathering was rigged. He told me because they had to prove a need for federal funding so they only picked people who would most likely show the result they needed to show. Perhaps you haven't actually been out of school and out in the real world long enough to see how things really work...

 

[Wyldfire]

A Ph.D. is a research degree, and research in psychology is done using statistical analyses, so I think you're going to have a hard time finding a Ph.D. program that you won't be using statistics in. Furthermore, statistics aren't used to prove anything, ever. They're used to show that the likelihood of something happening by chance is very small, as PlasSurg (you're welcome for your new awesome nickname, BTW ) said. Trust me, if you actually could make statistics say anything you wanted, my last year in the lab would've been MUCH MUCH easier.

The histories of statistics and psychology are completely intertwined, and we don't have the modern forms of either without the other.

You don't have to trust or believe in statistics to get a PhD...you just have to be able to do the work...which I will not have a problem doing.

 

[Wyldfire]

If you really want to (1)make a difference, (2)help people, and (3)be wealthy at the same time, do a Post Bac premed via Bio, Physics, Chem, and Orgo. Now apply to med school, do a Psych Residency (easiest residency to obtain) and open up a practice...

You'll probably make 250K a year minimum, have the experience and intelligence to treat children with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder, seizures, substance abuse. yadda yadda...


The schooling may be pricey but its one of the best investments you can make.

It's all about the loans baby

I have a 16 year old son with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. My ex husband has Borderline Personality Disorder. ODD is extremely difficult to be treated through therapy, and unless the child has something else with it (ADHD, Depression or Anxiety) there is no medication to help, either. My son is one of those very rare cases of ODD by itself. Therapy has never worked for him. I somehow managed to help him learn how to control it...but still haven't figured out exactly what it was that made a difference. I know his therapeutic dog helps, though.

I want to focus mainly on Addiction, but including co-morbidity. I want to develop a new treatment model and open a free rehab facility for poor and homeless addicts.

 

[Wyldfire]

Ya that's called BIAS and if you did your homework you would know that BIAS makes a test UNRELIABLE. Check out the index of your textbook for those two words.

BTW,
The index is that part in the back of the book that has all the page numbers listed with the concepts :crackup:

First...I have not taken a statistics class yet. Second...no sh*t, sherlock...I am fully aware of what bias is...and that bias makes a study/test unreliable. That was my entire point in saying it's foolish to place blind faith in statistics because the vast majority of the studies and statistics used to "prove" things to society have been manipulated. A perfect example is that lovely study that implies that for every dollar a man is paid that women are only paid 74 cents. That is one of the most cited statistics in this country and entirely manipulated to support the views of those who did the study.

 

[doctoroxygen]

You're confusing statistics with the reporting of statistics by others. Actual scientific studies report their methods etc., so they can be peer-reviewed, which makes bias difficult to get away with.

 

[Wyldfire]

:crackup:


you have a long ways to go in your field madam..

You don't really pay attention to detail because I made it quite clear a couple of times in this thread that I'm not that far into the course I'm taking. I've been studying Psychology on my own for over 25 years, though.

 

[Wyldfire]

You're confusing statistics with the reporting of statistics by others. Actual scientific studies report their methods etc., so they can be peer-reviewed, which makes bias difficult to get away with.

Yes, the last step of the Scientific Method includes peer review. Again, when dealing with people, what appears to be a "random sample" is often not very random at all. You're still in school, right? If so, you'll get a much clearer idea of what it is I'm talking about if you are ever in a position to see how the collection of statistics is done outside of the classroom. When federal funding is tied to statistics and agencies rely on that funding to operate there is a lot of bias and ways are found to sanitize that bias. I saw how statistics gathering is applied in these studies before taking a statistics class...and that is why my view is such that it is.

Am I saying that all people gathering statistics would behave that way? Not at all. I'm simply saying that it's far too common to make it wise to trust those statistics and what they supposedly show.

 

[doctoroxygen]

I guess we're talking about different kinds of statistics. I'm talking about experimental statistics rather than demographics. I can see that there's bias in demographics, but it's A LOT less common within experimental literature.

 

[Wyldfire]

I guess we're talking about different kinds of statistics. I'm talking about experimental statistics rather than demographics. I can see that there's bias in demographics, but it's A LOT less common within experimental literature.

Yeah...demographics is what I'm referring to regarding statistics. Very few people in the field are actually doing research for a living...most are working with agencies or in private practice. Most statistic gathering in the field is done by organizations and agencies who do it just like I said they do...because their funding is dependent upon it.

If you honestly do expect to leave school and eventually the research to go out into the field within an agency or organization that collects data and uses statistics you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

[oakraiderz2]

Glad to see the arguing is over. Anyone interested in social psych? i would assume there would be a lot figuring youre on this forum. Im pretty intrigued by group dynamics, motivation, decision making, and the self. I was hoping to have a good discussion about some psychological issues...word.

 

[doctoroxygen]

My research is in social psych and dating, but it's on automatic associations rather than anything cool like the old Festinger stuff. I was really into social psych and wanted to be a professor of it etc., until I realized that unless your name is Roy Baumeister, NO ONE is doing that kind of old-fashioned fun-with-confederates-and-deception social psych research. The IRB has pretty much done away with it.

Still, there's nothing more beautiful in science than an elegant social experiment. Check out "Social exclusion reduces prosocial behavior" by Baumeister if you want to see how that sh!t is done. Brings a tear to my eye

 

[Francisco d'Anconia]

...Im pretty intrigued by group dynamics...

One of the most important insights you can learn about group dynamics is to never underestimate the power of stupid people in mass.

 

[doctoroxygen]

Stuff is crazy awesome.

No kidding. I wanted to stand up and cheer when I read it. Then I said to myself "doctoroxygen is a furking dork".