Experimental research laboratories in public HEIs of psychology in Mexico

Abstract

In Mexico, unlike other countries, the public universities (HEIs for Higher Education Institutions) have the highest production of scientific research. Considering this, the main objective of this work is to describe the percentage of public HEIs that offer psychology degrees in Mexico and that have laboratories in which experimental research with human and non-human animals is currently being carried out. As a second objective, we seek to describe the coincidences and discrepancies between the information about the laboratories included in the HEIs websites and the answers obtained directly from the campuses. For this, a sample of 49 campuses from 34 universities was taken. We requested information about the laboratories through (1) Gmail®, (2) official Facebook® pages, (3) by phone, and (4) Google Forms®. In addition, information was collected from websites of the universities. The results revealed that nearly 80% of public university campuses do not have experimental research laboratories, furthermore, discrepancies were found between the information provided by the HEIs on their websites and the responses collected from the campuses. Two factors are proposed as possibly responsible for these results: reduction in the number of psychologists with an experimental orientation and lack of infrastructure and resources in universities.