Paper Description
Description: Your final paper will be a complete write up of your research project. It will include a title page (1 page), an abstract (1 page), an introduction (3 - 4 pages), a method section (1/2 - 1 pages), a results section (1/2 - 1 page), a discussion section (3 - 4 pages), a reference section (1 - 2 pages), and at least one figure (1 page). Your final paper should be between 12 - 15 pages and you must include at least 8 appropriate references. Your paper must be written using APA format. See the APA manual or Appendix A of our textbook for more information about this.
Most of your final paper will have already been written as part of earlier writing assignments. I've indicated which sections or content are new by bolding the section title and specifying what is new in the description below.
Title Page: Your title page should be a single page that includes the following information: a header with your running head and page number, the title of your paper, your name, and your affiliation.
Abstract: Your abstract should be a single page that provides a brief (150-250 word) summary of your study. You should describe your research question, hypothesis, method, results, and the implications of your results. Note that this is a new section that was not included in the previous writing assignments. You must write an abstract as part of the final paper.
Introduction: Your introduction section should introduce your research question to the reader and provide information about previous research to justify and motivate your own hypothesis. For your draft of this section, I would encourage you to try and write at least two pages (although you can always write more - remember that more content allows us to give more feedback!). Your draft should contain the following information:
· An introductory paragraph that discusses the general question or problem that you plan to investigate. This paragraph should end with your research question.
o This paragraph should provide the basic motivation for why your study is necessary and what you are investigating.
· A detailed description of at least 3 specific research studies that relate to your topic
o These must be psychological studies published in a peer reviewed journal within the last 15 years
o Your description should include:
§ What the researchers did, including:
· An identification of the hypothesis
· A brief (1 - 2 sentence) description of the sample
· A brief (3 - 5 sentence) description of the materials and procedure used
§ What they found, including:
· An identification of the statistical test(s) used
· A statement of whether or not they found support for their hypothesis
· A brief (2 - 3 sentence) discussion of the specific findings
§ An explanation of what the results mean in relation to your own study.
· Consider critiquing the previous study (e.g., identify flaws or issues with the research), discussing limitations of the study (e.g., what else could have been explored or included), or identifying how this work could be built on by additional research.
Each description should be about ½ - 1 page in length. The goal when describing each study is to provide further motivation for your study, and to help build an argument for your hypothesis. Be sure to cite the study you're describing once per paragraph in APA format. Note that in previous drafts you were only required to discuss 2 previous research studies, so you will need to add one additional description of a research study for the final paper.
· A closing paragraph that identifies your hypothesis and provides a brief description of the goals and basic methodology for your study.
You must cite a minimum of 3 peer-reviewed psychology journal articles in your introduction section, but most students will need to cite between 4 and 5 articles in order to support all of the points made in this section.
Method: The purpose of the method section is to describe your study in sufficient detail so that your reader could replicate your work. For most students, the method section will be between ½ - 1 pages in length. It should include the following information:
· A participants subsection. This should describe how many people participated, who the participants were, how they were recruited, what [if anything] they received as compensation, and basic demographic information (e.g., gender, age, etc).
· A materials subsection. This should describe the materials used in your study
· A procedure subsection. This describes what participants did in your study step by step.
You must cite the OPL study in your method section if you selected the experiment project.
Results: Your results section describes your data and analysis. In this section, you should specify what you analyzed, how you analyzed it, and what you found. Your results should include descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics. You must report your results in both words and using appropriate notation. For most students, the results section will be between ½ - 1 page.
Discussion: Your discussion section should explain what you found and what it means. For the final paper, your discussion should be between 3 - 4 pages. While writing your discussion, be sure to include the following information:
· An explanation of your results
· An explanation of what your results mean in relation to your hypothesis
· A description of how your results relate to previous research. Specifically, did you results match what previous researchers have found? If so, why? If not, why not? You should plan to discuss at least 2 studies here.
· A description of any potential flaws, limitations, or confounds in your study that might have impacted your results. Consider your sample, your materials, your design, etc. and analyze them to determine what you could have done differently or better in order to improve the validity/reliability of your study or to produce different results.
· A description of where you could go next in this research area. This could be a suggestion for follow up studies, new directions to explore, or how to revise your own study
· A closing paragraph that summarizes the current understanding of this topic based on previous research and your study
Most students will need to cite at least 3 sources in their discussion section (2 peer reviewed psychology journal articles that relate to their findings, and the textbook to support the discussion of flaws/limitations/confounds), but additional citations may be needed to support your arguments in this section.
References: In this section, you will provide references for all of the sources that you cited in your paper. Do not include references for any papers that you haven't cited! You will need a minimum of 8 appropriate references (peer reviewed psychological articles published between 2000 - 2015) but many students will need to reference at least 10 articles in order to fully support their points. Note that I will allow you to cite the textbook as one of your 8 references even though it does not meet these criteria, but the OPL website will not count as one of your 8 required references. For most students, you reference section will be 1 - 2 pages in length.