Paper Assignment 85-102 Fall 2012
Assignment: Write a 5 to 7 page paper on a psychological topic of your choice. Please see below for guidelines on picking a topic. Include a short paragraph at the end of the paper assessing how effectively or completely the psychological literature provided the basis for answering the question your paper was trying to answer. In addition, describe other sources that might be useful in achieving a more definitive answer. Alternatively, you can briefly outline a study that could help provide a more definitive answer to your question. You will have the chance to receive guidance on the rough draft of your paper to help you write a strong and effectively communicative one. I have also posted information about the factors that make a good paper on the course website.

References: You need to have three references and they should be printed from the library's web page. On that page, click on "Databases by name" and then click on "P" and you will find PsycINFO. This will ensure that a) you have picked a topic that has some research done on it, and b) that you know how to use this extremely useful research literature search process. For those who need to access the website from off campus can do so by going to the library's main page. Under "User Services" click "Off-Campus/Wireless Access". Follow the instructions on the screen. If you sincerely try to find references but cannot, and yet are particularly interested in some topic, come talk it over with the instructor or your TA and we will try to help you gain access to the psychological literature.

Purpose: To allow you to pursue in some depth a topic you are interested in. To have the experience of putting together information and ideas and communicating them to an audience through writing.

Audience: The target audience is your classmates; intelligent people who have studied some psychology but probably know relatively little about your specific topic. 

Due dates:

Late Policy: For the topic and references turn ins, the penalty is one point off the final paper per weekday late. The penalty for lateness for either of the two paper deadlines (rough draft and final) is minus three points off the final paper grade per weekday late. Two additional points will be taken off for missing the Oct. 24 rough draft process of mutually providing feedback on each others' papers. There are no circumstances under which these mild penalties will be waived. You can protect yourself against unforeseen circumstances by targeting an earlier date, and are strongly encouraged to do so.

Selecting a Topic: You are asked to pick something for which there is some published work in the psychological literature. Looking through your textbook is an excellent way to find topics. There are also many other books in the library that reference the published literature in psychology and can serve the same purpose. A good test of your proposed topic is whether you are able to find references to published journal articles on your topic. One way to start this search is to find a reference in your textbook that is relevant to the topic you have chosen. Another is to do a subject search in the PsycINFO data base, progressively narrowing it until you get relevant references.  If you have difficulty finding a topic after making an effort to do so, I or your TA can help. Your topic should meet the following minimum criteria:

  1. Be in the form of a question you would be interested in finding an answer to.
  2. Been the subject of some serious psychological investigation.
  3. Well focused and specific enough so that you are not writing at too general a level about too big a topic. 

Some example topics:

If you want to include some empirical data that you gather on your topic, that is fine.

Format: The paper should be a “relaxed” version of APA. This means that references and bibliography should be done as they are done in the course textbook by Gleitman et al. Include a title page and an abstract. These do not count for the page requirement. Double-spaced, normal margins and fonts. Use the this website as a resource for APA style.

In Closing: Writing a paper can be a chore or it can be an enjoyable adventure of intellectual exploration. A lot depends on the initial choice of topic and on spreading out the investigative/exploratory part of the work. Your TAs and I look forward to reading the papers. If done right, the Fun/Work ratio for this task is 2.4/1.

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