For Week 5 / Module 5 you will choose one of the following assignments. Each will require a written paper not to exceed five pages in length.
Assignment Choice A:
OBSERVATIONAL ONLY STUDY
You will conduct a short observational only study designed to answer a research question in social psychology. This assignment will be only observation with no interaction between you and the participants.
For example:
You might wish to spend a few hours observing children in a kindergarten or special day class, and keep track of how many can sit still and follow instructions. This can be charted and your paper can discuss the possibility of ADHD with children who are out of their chair, moving about the room, and not listening.
Perhaps you are interested in gender and the toys young children choose to play with. Might small boys pick up a doll, or a little girl play with a dump truck. Unless children are told specific toys are for boys and girls, you might observe they enjoy playing with them or perhaps not.
Another idea is to spend a few hours at your local mall observing how many people you see who are glued to their cell phones and rarely look up.
Chart your findings, and discuss the latest research for distraction using cell phones. What might you observe?
Please pick a topic which you can observe and research your findings. This can be something you are passionate about, want to learn more about, and find productive or not to society. It does need to be observational and a social problem.
Submit a five-page paper which combined will include:title page, body of assignment with introduction, statement of problem; description of the observational investigation, discussion, analysis, and findings, and a strong conclusionwhich will tie your paper together. Be sure to include at least one primary resource with supportive APA citation(s) which will match your reference page.
Assignment Choice B:
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The annotated bibliography will help to ensure that you use concrete evidence for your final research paper. In order to create this annotated bibliography, you must find at least 3scholarly sources that you plan to use in your paper. Each of your sources must be peer-reviewed and published within the last 7 years.
You can use the article you found for your article review as 1 of your sources. Your bibliography will be graded based on its adherence to the grading rubric, as well as to the guidelines explained in the current APA manual.
There are times when an annotated bibliography will not only state the thesis and scope of the study, but name the hypothesis of the study and the population which was studied. In addition, methodology and the main points will mention if the study was a survey, type of experiment, a case study, and who the subjects were, including how they were recruited.
For each entry (or source) on your annotated bibliography, you must:
1. Summarize the main idea in 2-4 sentences.
2. Relate the material found in the source to your research topic using an additional 1-2 sentences.
3.Include important page numbers in order to locate easily as these can be useful when you return at a later date.
4. Evaluate the background of the author and the intended audience.
5. Point out the source's potential usefulness to your research.