psychology

Psychology 100 Research Project Requirements and Guidelines

A.    You will find two psychologically based articles, both related to the same topic:

1.      Scientific journal article including an experiment performed by the authors of the article (no case studies or meta-analyses are allowed)

2.      A mainstream or popular press article sufficiently useful to meet the requirement of the assignment, and related to the topic of the scientific journal article

B.     You will submit these articles (you need to convert to pdf so that I can read them. Do not send me a link from our database as that will take me to the sign in page of the library and I will not be able to access your article). 

C.     You will write a one page summary for your source including an APA style reference for that source. You will be answering the question of why would someone want to read this article as the focus of each summary.

D.    Formatting your summary: APA style reference at the top of the page, single spaced, 1st line indented. The summary will take up the rest of the page.

Helpful information

·         The following is a general example of an APA style reference:

                     Author’s last name. Author’s 1st initial of 1st name. (Publication date).

         Title of journal article. Title of Journal, volume number (issue number), page

         numbers.

FOLLOW THIS STYLE PERFECTLY, INCLUDING ITALICIZING, PUNCTUATION, AND WHICH WORDS GET CAPITALIZED, and you will have no problem.

·         Do not broadly use the internet. Rather, use the databases in our library system which you have paid for. There are articles published on the internet which do not undergo the review process that articles in our subscribed databases have. There is also the possibility that you will have to pay out of your own pocket for articles online (especially from scientific journals), so just don’t go to internet broadly.

·         Do not use articles which are more than 10 years old.

·         Do not use the option sometimes available onsite for it to ‘create’ the APA style reference for you. Oddly, often it is WRONG. Use the formula I gave you or use our online writing center, Purdue writing center, or the APA site to insure that you earn credit.

·         Do not write a series of quotes…I know how you sound when you talk. Paraphrase what you understand. Don’t write about what you don’t understand. 

·         Focus on the rationale for the hypothesis and the discussion sections (forget about the results-unless you have a master’s degree in math)—the discussion is the interpretation of the results) of the scientific article for your summary information. Read the methods, but DO NOT include that info, remember you have only 1 page for your summary.