Guidelines Paper Psyc101 Spring 08
Your first paper should be approximately 4 pages in length, standard size fonts and margins, please. They should be printed on both sides of the page and are to be turned in during lecture on your due date. Late papers will be accepted, but 10% of the possible total points will be deducted for EACH day your paper is late. Your paper should include: a summary of a peerreviewed journal article describing original research (include a brief description of the hypothesis, subjects, method, results, and conclusion); a critique of the article (discuss in your own words what you see to be the strengths and weakness of the research); and a brief discussion of how the research is relevant to daily life. In order to make sure you select an article from an appropriate journal, you are required to use an article from the list of approved journals included at the end of this document. Suggested guidelines for how much space to devote to each of the components of your paper: Summary of the article 2 pages Critique of the article 1-1.5 pages Relevance of the research/Summary
0.5-1 page
The major factors that will be considered when grading your papers are: Have you succeeded in finding relevant, primary source (peer reviewed journal articles) research to review? Has that material been presented clearly? Have you done a thoughtful, creative, in-depth critique of that material? Has the research and your critiques of it been synthesized and integrated into a thoughtful understanding that logically flows from what has been presented? Is the paper well organized and well written? (see below) Is the paper written in APA style? Other considerations Write to your audience. In the case of this paper, the audience will be graduate students in psychology. Not a very big audience, but they'll be cheering loudly for you all to write really good papers. You can safely assume that they have baseline knowledge of all the topics you might write about and that you don't need to spend much time explaining the basics to them. For example, using of a page to describe what constitutes autism would not be a good use of space; probably one or two sentences would suffice. Go to the library. I love Google, and I use it almost Wikipedia everyday. is also a really interesting and useful site. But using these tools does not count as psychological research. Make sure you understand the articles you're using. If you don't, ask. You can ask your graduate student TA, me, your recitation leader, or anyone else who might be able to help clarify things for you. Many scholarly articles use a lot of jargon and refer to complicated statistical procedures. A big part of the assignment is to learn how to understand this kind of literature. Be
aware that just because something sounds sophisticated and is published in a reputable journal, that doesn't mean that it's good research. Proofread your paper at least twice before turning it in. Spell-check is wonderful, but almost always misses some mistakes. Papers without mistakes will get better grades than papers with mistakes. Papers with a lot of mistakes will not get a good grade and will make your audience grumpy. Try not to make them grumpy. Is your paper well-written? (Part 1) In order to be considered well-written your paper must be free from typographical errors, spelling errors, grammatical errors, incorrect word usage, etc. In other words, please proof-read your paper before turning it in. Spellchecking programs are recommended, but please be aware that they very frequently will miss some errors. Is your paper well-written? (Part 2) In order to be considered well-written your paper must also be well-organized, with well-constructed paragraphs and conclusions that logically flow from introductory and supporting statements. The University offers a free writing service to anyone who wishes help in producing a well-written paper. Visit their website for an overview of services offered. http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/
List of Approved Journals for your Paper Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Behavioral Neuroscience Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Journal of Abnormal Psychology School Psychology Quarterly Journal of Applied Psychology Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Journal of Family Psychology Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Journal of Pediatric Psychology