Assignment task:
Research Assignment Guide
Prompt:
The Research guide is designed to integrate your developing skills in self-reflection, scientific knowledge, awareness of research methods, and critical thinking, as they relate to the field of developmental psychology. The topic is Adolescence.
This should be one thousand words.
Preparation:
Ensure that you are up to date on your reading assignments for the course (through Chapters 15 and 16, Middle Adulthood).
Review key characteristics of each major developmental stage to help with your focus for the paper.
Reflect on the major area of development in which you are most interested (e.g., physical, cognitive, social, emotional).
To do list:
Step 1: Select one of the major developmental periods you have studied thus far in the course: adolescence
Step 2: Select a phenomenon or construct that features prominently in your chosen developmental stage. The construct should reflect one or more of the major areas of human development (physical, cognitive, social, or emotional). For instance, if you are focusing on adolescence, perhaps you select the construct of egocentrism, which includes both cognitive and social components.
Step 3: Review the section(s) of the Santrock text that is relevant to your developmental stage and construct.
Step 4: Prepare to address the following:
Step 4.1: Describe, in detail, the developmental stage you are focusing on for this research paper. You should briefly review the major developmental tasks of this stage as they pertain to physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Step 4.2: Describe, in detail, your selected construct of interest. Be sure to define the construct and discuss its relevance during your selected stage of development. If the construct first appears earlier in development or somehow changes with development across various stages, you will need to discuss how the construct changes over time.
Step 4.3: Pick at least one theory that helps to explain the relevance of your construct to your chosen developmental stage. Explain the theory and its application to your construct and stage.
Step 4.4: From the available 6 peer-reviewed journal articles (will be found under references at the bottom), select and read at least 3 peer-reviewed journal articles that have some relevance to your topic and/or proposed study. Some articles may contribute information about your topic of study, or they may contribute information about research methods that could be applied to your specific topic of study. You are not required to understand or discuss the statistics involved in these articles, but you should be able to glean some information from the articles with relevance to your topic or proposed methods.
Step 4.5: Now, consider yourself a scientist. Imagine you can conduct any study you like about this construct in your chosen developmental stage. Put forth at least one research question and describe the method(s) you would use to collect the data (e.g., observational, survey/interview, standardized test, case study, physiological measures). Explain what type of study design you would use (e.g., descriptive, correlational, or experimental). What is your hypothesis about what the results of the study will be? Why would this study be important to conduct, and how might it contribute to new knowledge in this area of developmental science?
REFERENCES:
Conrod, P. J., & Nikolaou, K. (2016). Annual Research Review: On the developmental neuropsychology of substance use disorders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57, 371-394.
Glenn, C. R., Kleiman, E. M., Kellerman, J., Pollak, O., Cha, C. B., Esposito, E. C., Porter, A. C., Wyman, P. A., & Boatman, A. E. (2020). Annual Research Review: A meta-analytic review of worldwide suicide rates in adolescents. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61, 294-308.
Lau, J. Y. F., & Waters, A. M. (2017). Annual Research Review: An expanded account of information-processing mechanisms in risk for child and adolescent anxiety and depression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 58, 387-407.
McAdams, T. A., Cheesman, R., & Ahmadzadeh, Y. I. (2023). Annual Research Review: Towards a deeper understanding of nature and nurture: combining family-based quasi-experimental methods with genomic data. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 64, 693-707.
Newlove-Delgado, T., Russell, A. E., Mathews, F., Cross, L., Bryant, E., Gudka, R., Ukoumunne, O. C., & Ford, T. J. (2023). Annual Research Review: The impact of Covid-19 on psychopathology in children and young people worldwide: Systematic review of studies with pre- and within-pandemic data. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 64, 611-640.
Odgers, C. L., & Jensen, M. R. (2020). Annual Research Review: Adolescent mental health in the digital age: facts, fears, and future directions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61, 336-348.