As I mentioned in my first post, I’m currently completing the capstone project for my Psychology major in the class Psychology of Sustainability with Jolina Ruckert. Capstones are 400-level courses focused on a specific topic of the professor’s interest, so they can be quite different! My class is focused on environmental psychology.
We have lecture components (which my professor records for us to watch independently, since we are fully online), reading discussions on Zoom, and independent work for our capstone projects. We have quite a bit of freedom in choosing our project focus, and work alone, unlike the smaller projects we complete in groups in Psychology 300: Research Methods.
Environmental sustainability is something I’m passionate about, so I was really excited to work on my capstone in this class! Our readings usually present different viewpoints about sustainability, which lead to lively class discussions. There is also a great deal of peer support while we develop our project ideas.
This week my classmates and I submitted our capstone project proposals. Jolina asked us to do a brief literature review of at least three articles about our project, propose our research questions and hypotheses, and samples of the scales or measures we will be using. This is more for survey/experimental projects, while other students are working on really cool programs to offer for individuals in our community!
Bonus: me and Winnie on a hike in Tryon (kind of environment-related?)
My project, which I’m still developing, will be a research study about common factors that predict COVID-19 behavior and pro-environmental behavior. These are both large-scale crises that ask us to change our behaviors to protect others or the environment, so I originally guessed that there might be factors that predict both kinds of behavior! The research process has been a bit challenging since there aren’t any studies looking at this particular relationship yet (but that also makes it exciting)! My study will look at personality and how you perceive the threat (of climate change or COVID) as possible predictors.
As it happens every semester, my friends will soon be flooded with surveys from Psych majors in PSY300 or their capstone course, asking the LC community to share their experiences and thoughts. I actually really like this part of the semester, because it’s fun to contribute to the research my classmates are working on!
Time to get back to work! Feel free to reach out with any questions, calebweinhardt@lclark.edu.