. For this assignment, you will write a 4-5 page paper about four research articles on a particular topic discussed in your textbook. (Use 12 point font, double spacing, and 1- inch margins.) You will also post some of the preliminary planning for this project on the class discussion boards. The project grade will be out of 100 points: 80 points for the paper and 10 points each for the discussion board components. I describe the paper first, and then the earlier components, so you know where you’re going with the assignment. Textbooks in psychology are meant to summarize the state of the field at the time of publication for students just starting out in the field, but it is not the primary literature of psychology. The primary sources, the base of the pyramid, consists of individual research articles about studies or experiments. The next level up consists of review articles explaining of a lot of research articles; this is considered a secondary source. Your textbook uses both these kinds of information, plus other sources: it is therefore the third level up, or tertiary. It can only cover a limited amount of the topic. Your job is to dig down to the primary research articles at one stone at the base of the pyramid. (1) Identify a major topic covered in the textbook, whether we cover it in the course or not. You can’t cover too big of a chunk for a 5 page paper, but you’d like it to be big enough for a good paper. In Lightfoot, Cole & Cole (2012), choose a heading in . On page 130, for example, ” ,” in is too big, and on p. 135, ” is too small, but , on p. 133 is just right.You may use any topic, in any chapter covered in the course as a topic, but you will run it by me first. Choose at least one refernce from the section to look up in the back of your book; 3 or more articles must come from PsychInfo (see below). (2) Briefly summarize in your own words what the text says about the topic. What do we know? What research is described? You don’t need to go into specific details about the studies they describe in detail, but give a broad overview, as best you can. (3) Find three closely related research articles on your chosen topic. How do you know if the articles you’ve chosen are scholarly? Find the articles via a search in PsycInfo, the main psychology research database, and check the box to limit your search to peer-reviewed articles. Don’t expect to find articles from a typical web search, via Google or other search engines. They are often not scholarly enough. . How do you know if the articles you’ve chosen are “closely related?” They discuss the same key issues, whether from a similar perspective or a different one. Maybe they are by one or more of the same researchers as a study that’s already cited in your textbook. Maybe they each cite several of the same articles or one article cites the other. (4) Describe what each of these three articles tells us about the chosen topic. For example, what does Paper A tell you abo
ut parents’ discussion of emotion? Briefly describe how the studies described are related to the topic you’ve chosen, what happened in the studies, what the major findings were, and how these findings modify or extend (or even contradict) what the textbook tells us about the topic. (5) Summarize what you learned, and tie together the discussion in the text with the additional research you’ve found. Did the new research add more evidence in a similar direction as the information cited in the text, or did it change your understanding of the topic in some more fundamental way? If you were going to rewrite that section of the text, are there different points you’d highlight than what was in the text? Why or why not? I’m less interested in the conclusions you draw than in the reasoning you use to draw them. (6) In another paragraph or two, tell me one or two things you’d like to know about the topic you chose, but that were not covered in the textbook or the articles you read. (7) Cite your articles in your main text (that is, list the authors’ last names and year of publication for each source). At the end of your paper, include the full references for the articles you cited. Use APA format. See 1. All articles must be located on PsycInfo. To use PsycInfo at Hofstra, 2. Each article you discuss must report at least one study, whether it’s an experiment (random assignment to condition, manipulation of an independent variable) or a correlational study. It can’t be a review paper or summary. One tip is to scan the article to confirm there is a Method section and a Results section, which would describe what was done in the study, and what was found. If you are unsure if the articles you’ve found fit these requirements, e-mail me to check. 3. Three of the four minimum articles you use in the section you’re writing about (e.g., in “Parents’ Discussion of Emotion,” the authors already mention an article by Eisenberg, Cumberland et al from 1998, so you cannot use that article for this assignment). The purpose here is to find research that extends what’s summarized in the text. 4. Beginning with some of the articles that are cited in the text can be a good starting point for the assignment. You can look in the back of the textbook for the full reference for any article that’s cited in the text, and then you can search for that specific article in PsycInfo. For many records, PsycInfo includes as link that says “Times cited in this database” followed by a number. For example, if it says an article has been cited 5 times, if you click the link, it will show you a list of five sources that cite that article in their reference list. That alone doesn’t mean the article is on the same topic (or that it’s an empirical article describing new research), but it’s a starting point. Also, for each article, PsycInfo includes keywords, so you can try to search using some of the same keywords that a related article is tagged with.