1. You must choose some bit of current news of interest to you THAT IS RELATED TO PSYCHOLOGY AND TO A CHAPTER COVERED DURING THE SEMESTER. It must be from a reliable news source– any type of media is fine: television, newspaper article, online news website, or an organization’s website. You may not use a blog or opinion piece. If you are unsure, contact me before proceeding.
2. Then find TWO RESEARCH ARTICLES IN A PSYCHOLOGY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY APA that report on research directly relating to the current news article you have chosen. Specifically, each article must report on ONE piece of psychological research and must be published in an APA journal. The authors of the article must be the psychologists who conducted the research.
3. You MUST use the PsycArticles database (NOT PsychInfo) at the MSU library website to ensure the article was published in an APA journal.
4. Write a 5-6 page paper, this does not include your References page. A title page is unnecessary. Simply put your name and the title of your paper on the first page and begin your paper on that page. The paper must be double-spaced.
5. Summarize both research articles, briefly. Who were the subjects? What were the procedures? What were the results? This should be a separate, short section.
6. Integrate the current news article with the research findings of your two professional research articles, and analyze this information using a psychological concept/theory that was covered in one of the assigned chapters from our text. In your paper you must integrate and analyze the news article, the two research articles, and information from the text (theory, topic, or concept), and reference each appropriately. Do not describe the news article at length. It it is much more important to analyze and relate that article to psychological research and textbook information. (Reminder: An analysis is not a summary!)
7. Provide a References section at the end of the paper. Include your two articles, the news article, and the textbook on your References page. Thus, there should be four references. The References section must be in APA style. Simply check the back of the text or the two professional research articles.
8. You must use APA style referencing within the body of the paper. Your textbook and the research articles use APA referencing style throughout, feel free to use them as guides.
9. Give your paper a title that reflects the topic of your paper– this gives the reader context. Do NOT simply write “Final Paper” or “Psychology in the Real World Paper” as the title. Fair warning! Do NOT write an abstract, you are not conducting that type of research.
10. Do not use a reference in the body of the paper or in your References section you did not actually read. That is, if you are discussing a theorist or research mentioned in the text, do not reference the article on which the textbook authors are reporting. You can, however, mention the researcher whose work is cited in the text by saying, for example, (Caporrimo, as in Huffman, et al., 2018). In general, however, avoid secondary referencing. It is clumsy and simply unnecessary for a short Intro to Psych paper!
11. Understand you will be reading the journal articles online, HOWEVER, I want the reference in the traditional manner (check the References section at the end of your textbook). I do NOT want a URL; I want the full written reference in APA style as it appeared in the journal. You can also check the reference in my example, below, to see the format for referencing. DO NOT GIVE ME A URL.
12. Research articles must be published 2016 or later.
13. You may NOT use research articles that are review articles, meta-analyes, opinions, editorials, etc. Each research article must report on an actual research study conducted by the authors themselves. It can be correlational, quasi-experimental, or experimental. This means there will be abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections. If you find the Results section to be confusing, do not worry…. After the statistical results are given, the authors always say what those results mean. The Discussion section also clarifies the results. If you are unsure about the appropriateness of an article, contact me!
14. When you conduct your MSU library search—and you MUST do your journal article searches on the MSU library site— go to the Library page, click on “Databases,” then search “Databases by Subject” and click on “Psychology/Sociology” from the menu at the top. Once there, scroll down and click on PsycArticles (not PsycInfo). This will ensure you can find full-text articles published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Do NOT use articles from a journal not published by APA. Absolutely NO exceptions. Every semester there are students who do not adhere to this requirement and it greatly affects the grade earned on the paper.
15. Be sure to read the Model Papers, posted in Modules on Canvas. They are not perfect, but they are good models to follow; both papers earned good grades.
