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Personal Interest Research Paper Assignment
Psych 101
Faculty: Laura Feren, PhD
The assignment on researching a topic of interest is due
according to the course syllabus deadline. Youmay, of course, turn
in your finished paper before the due date. Papers must be turned
in as a paper copy.
E-mailed assignments will not be accepted. Late assignments will
not receive full credit. Presentations
will occur in the last two meetings of class. The paper is worth
20 points in the course.
The grade for your paper will be in part determined by how well
you follow these instructions. I
recommend that you carefully read them more than once! Your
paper should be based on your reading and
reference materials in the form of scientific journal articles,
books, media reports and web sites. Ideas or
facts taken from other sources should be appropriately
referenced. The additional purpose of thisassignment is to increase
your familiarity with research for psychology and informational
databases. This
is important because you will need to use articles, studies and
books to find references for your paper. For
Example: Note that you can locate review articles with PubMed by
using the limits menu to limit the
search to the publication type = review PubMed may be assessed
from the DVC library website:
You are required to use a minimum of five (5) references in
researching your topic. References may be
scientific articles, web sites, books, media reports, and so
forth. Of course, you may use as many references
as you wish, beyond this minimum number of five. These 5
required articles should have been published
within the past ten (10) years.
There is an important distinction between PRIMARY and SECONDARY
sources.
PRIMARY scientific articles/literature/sources are:
* articles that describe original research
* these would be peer-reviewed prior to publication
SECONDARY scientific articles/literature/sources are:
* review articles, books, etc that summarize/overview the
primary literature
* may or may not be peer-reviewed; often are written in response
to invitations from journals,
book editors, or publishers
Paper Outline
Introduction Section
First, you must pick a topic related to psychology. The project
is meant to be an opportunity to learn more
about a topic that you find particularly interesting. Your topic
should be about something to do with the
content of the course as outlined by the syllabus. You may
expand upon material covered in class that isaddress material
beyond that presented in course lectures or the text. It is also
essential that your topic be
on for which there is current scientific research material.
Discuss why the topic is of interest to you.
Provide examples and discuss the examples to you.
I. ResearchSectionYou need to identify your selected topic.
Discuss past and present literature and literature studies of
yourtopic. Summarize and discuss the studies that are important or
of particular interest to you. Discuss any
trends or gaps in the studies or research.
II. Conclusion SectionYou should summarize overall about the
information you have researched. What did you learn new about
the topic as it relates to you? List your references or sources
on a reference page following the text. Be
prepared to discuss your research in class at the end of the
course.
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General Instructions
The paper should be typewritten, double-spaced, on standard 8.5
x 11 inch white paper with 1-inch
margins. A cover page should be a title page containing the
title of your paper, your name, and the name of
the course. The main text of the paper begins on the second page
and should consist of 6 double-spacedpages in length. The text
should be clear and concise, conforming to accepted standards of
English style
and usage. Abbreviations must be spelled out the first time they
are used.
Special Notes:
Grammar, spelling, and clarity of presentation are all very
important and will be considered when grading
your paper. It is recommended that you give your paper to one or
more friends to read before turning it in.
It is also recommended that you read your paper aloud, even if
only to yourself, in order to perfect its
grammar and clarity.
Following the text, there should be one of more pages (as
needed) containing the reference list
(bibliography) of the paper. Pages should be sequentially
numbered in the lower margin. The title page,
reference list pages, and any illustrations and tables do not
count as part of the 6 pages of required text.
Originality: All papers submitted for this course must be
original in content and composition. Your
paper must be written expressly for this course and it is not
acceptable to turn in the same paper for
more than one class. In particular, if you have taken other
classes and have written papers in these
classes, you should not be using any part of these other papers
for this assignment. The main point of
this assignment is to learn in depth about a new subject. Choose
a new topic and write a new paper
for this course!
Be f o re f i n a l g ra d e s a re a ss ig n e d , yo u r re se
a rc h p a p e rwi l l b e u p lo a d e d to Tu rn - I t -I n .c o
m .All material taken from other sources must be referenced. Such
sources include, but are not limited to,
journal, books, news article, information found on the Internet,
and basically any other form of published
material. The originality of your paper may be checked by
comparing it to the entire WWW and additional
digital databases. To copy language or ideas from another source
without appropriate reference is an
ethical violation called plagiarism and will result in a failing
grade for our paper and perhaps furtherdisciplinary action.
Quotations: Any information used as exact words from any sources
is to be designated by the use of
quotation marks and a citation to the source. It is not
sufficient to have only a citation to the source without
also using quotation marks. However, in writing a paper, the use
of quotations should be limited to writing
whose particularly elegant or pithy nature contributes something
very special to your paper. Otherwise, say
it in your own words! Excessive use of prose written by other,
even if appropriately quoted and referenced,
will result in a low grade for your paper.
Footnotes: Do not use footnotes in your paper. Say what needs to
be said within the body of the text. Notethat a footnote is not the
same as a reference citation, as described below.
Citations and References: A citation is the designation of the
source of an idea, fact, quote, etc. placedwithin the body of the
text. A reference is the complete description of the source
information material as
listed in the reference list of the paper. There are two primary
reasons for referencing sources of
information: 1) to give credit to the authors of the material
that you are using; and 2) to guide readers to the
source, should they wish more information. Thus, information in
the reference list must be complete
enough to allow readers to easily locate your source
material.
Format for Citations: In the text of your paper, citations refer
to author and year and are contained within
parentheses using the following style: one author (Snyder 2002);
two authors (Baranano & Snyder 2001);
three or more authors (Snyder et al. 2002). If more than two
references are cited by different authors,
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separate the entries with a semicolon: (Snyder 2000; Goldstein
1990). If several references from different
years are cited by the same first author, separate the years by
commas: (Snyder et al. 1979, 1988, 1995,
2002). If more than two references with the same first author
and same year are cited, use lowercase letters
after the year: (Snyder et al. 2001 a,b). Lowercase letters are
then inserted in the corresponding references
in the reference list. To cite works with no explicitly named
author, as would be the case for many Internetweb sites, use
whichever indicator of website authorship that you will be using in
your reference list: such
as, (National Institute of Drug Abuse 2008) or (Eli Lily and
Company 2008).
Example of how to use citations in the text:
Capsaicin, the chemical component of chili peppers that gives
rise to the sensation of hotness,
interacts with sensory receptors that are also activated by
thermal heat (Caterina et al. 1997).
Format for References: Following the text there should be a list
of references (bibliography) documenting
the resource materials used in writing your paper. Resource
materials include published or copyrighted
material in any form. References are listed at the end of the
manuscript and should be in alphabetical order
by the last name of the first author and then by year if
multiple publications by the same first author are
cited. A reference should appear in the reference list if and
only if there is a corresponding citation in the
text.
In your Reference List, you MUST use the following formats:
*for books:
Perrine DM (1996) The Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs: History,
Pharmacology, and
Cultural Context. Washington DC: American Chemical Society
Schultes RE & Raffauf RF (1990) The Healing Forest.
Portland: Dioscorides Press
* for journal articles:
Catarina MJ et al (1997) The capsaicin receptor: a
heat-activated ion channel in the pain
pathway.Nature 389: 816-824
Rudolph U & Antkowiak B (2004) Molecular and neuronal
substrates for generalanesthetics.Nature Review Neuroscience 5:
709-720
* for newspaper articles:Stolberg SG (2002) Warnings sought for
popular painkiller. New York Times
(September 20)
Berenson A (2007) Mother wonders if psychosis drug helped kill
son. New York Times
(January 4)
* for WWW sites:
National Institute on Drug Abuse (2008) Methamphetamine: abuse
and addition.
Retrieved January 22, 2008 from
http://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchReports/Methamph/Methamph.html
Eli Lilly and Company (2008) Zyprexa Olanzapine prescribing
information. Retrieved
January 22,2008
fromhttp://pi.lilly.com/com/us/zypresa-pi.pdf
Online journals that also exist in printed from are not cited as
websites, but as the printed journal.
The above reference format is based on, although not identical
to, the APA style of the AmericanPsychological Association. For
additional questions regarding reference format, you may refer to
various
APA style resources available on the web. It is important that
you use the exact format of text citation and
reference described above. Many formats of text citation and
reference exist in the scientific literature.
The format described above is the format for this class. Points
will be deducted from your paper if the exact
format of citation and reference described above is not
followed.
I look forward to reading your paper!
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http://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchReports/Methamph/Methamph.htmlhttp://pi.lilly.com/com/us/zypresa-pi.pdfhttp://pi.lilly.com/com/us/zypresa-pi.pdfhttp://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchReports/Methamph/Methamph.htmlhttp://pi.lilly.com/com/us/zypresa-pi.pdf
