PRELIMINARY
STATEMENT DUE SEPTEMBER 16| OVERVIEW |
PRELIMINARY
STATEMENT DUE SEPTEMBER 16 |
SYP 5105-01 FALL 2009
THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
THE PROJECT TOPIC CHOICES WILL GO HERE
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WRITING TIPS |
 TIME
GUIDELINES |
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 ON
TEAMWORK |
Teams find it easier to plan and execute a small experiment, survey, or observation than individuals, can do more comprehensive literature reviews and more complex presentations. You may choose to work in teams for the Course Paper. Turn in the names of all team members on the Course Paper by October 7 with the updated project description. I also will alert you to possible teammates (but the choice is yours).
This is your opportunity to have some fun and be creative with Social Psychology.
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Wide latitude exists for your project. Here are some possibilities:
LIBRARY RESEARCH PAPER TOPICS:
EMPIRICAL STUDY TOPIC EXAMPLES:
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Here's what you need to tell me:
EXAMPLE:I will examine the effects of two different counseling plans that involve social and nonsocial feedback on self-rated self-esteem in college students.
EXAMPLE: I will do a literature review on causes and consequences of bullying in middle and high schools.
EXPECTED PROPECTUS LENGTH: 1-3 double-spaced typed pages or equivalent.
DON'T: be too specific. I don't need to know your coding categories, any standardized tests or minute experimental manipulations. That information will be on the OCTOBER 7 update.
The biggest problem with papers by both
students AND professionals is that it takes too long to find out what the
paper is about. NONE of us has the leisure to leaf through six or seven
pages to discover the issues that the author will address. Your introduction,
in a few paragraphs, should tell me what your paper will be about, why
the topic is important to study, and the order of the subtropics that you
will examine. The introduction appropriately goes
at the VERY BEGINNING of your paper. Many
précis for meetings such as the American Educational Research Association
begin with a short paragraph labeled "purpose".
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Practice this paragraph or two for your paper prospectus in step 1 for September 16.
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TIMING: WHAT'S COMING UP: |
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NOVEMBER 4: PROJECT DRAFT DUE |
The draft of your project is due by class on November 4. This is to allow you to rewrite it before the final due date, which is Wednesday, December 2.
You may rewrite your draft course paper for a higher grade IF I receive your paper by November 4. You can't lose! Your grade on the rewrite will not be lower than the draft. At worst it will be the same (and that doesn't happen very often; nearly all papers are much better the second time around). ALL rewrites are due December 2, 2008. I will not read any rewrites turned in after that time. Of course, if you didn't turn in your draft before then, all papers are due by December 2, draft or rewrite.
The Provost fines our department $10 per late grade per day. That is why I must leave enough time to read your final paper to turn in grades on time!
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PRELIMINARY WRITING SUGGESTIONS (more to come...) |
REFERENCE
APPROPRIATE LITERATURE
Be sure to use professional journals, such as The Journal of Communication, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Social Psychology Quarterly, and other professional journals in your field. In general, AVOID popular magazines or newspapers; their authors typically are journalists, not trained behavioral scientists, and at best, only interview behavioral scientists. Avoid WIKIPEDIA since unfortunately it can be edited and re-edited so content is not standard and its peer review is quite different from professional peer review!
YOUR
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
Your personal experiences as a counselor or a teacher make terrific illustrations. However, recall that in a professional conference paper or article, personal recollections constitute a VERY small part of what is presented to the reader (maybe 5 percent, certainly no more than 10 percent). Your emphasis for this course paper should be on concepts and the evidence supporting or refuting the concepts. Use a sentence or so of personal experience (if appropriate) as a springboard to introduce a topic, or as an illustration, no more than that.
MAKE
YOUR MANUSCRIPT APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE
If I present my data on science reasoning in a Social Psychology paper session, I emphasize how and why social factors influence knowledge and reasoning rather than materials that focus more on science education per se. Most topics have several dimensions and depths to them. It is NOT "cheating" to focus most heavily on the perspectives that your audience wants to know about the most. Rather, you are providing a service for your audience of readers.
BE
SELECTIVE
The best paper is not usually the one that mentions the largest number of concepts in the fewest number of pages. This is because the paper will not be able to adequately define, describe, and evaluate each concept in a small space. Similarly the best paper is not the one that manages to cram the largest number of citations into the smallest amount of room. Your paper will be better if it selects a relatively small number of concepts and deals with them in depth. (See below)
ORGANIZE
AROUND CONCEPTS, NOT AUTHORS (AND A NOTE ON CITATIONS IN TEXT OR ELSEWHERE)
What were the major findings about your topic? Were group processes more important than "personality" in studies of bullying? How does ethnicity and its associated social experiences affect eating disorders? What are the major influences of cartoon violence on children's aggression? Take a look at your readings. They will summarize a finding ("imitation of aggression increased when the model was rewarded") then cite a few studies as examples.
The MOST important thing about your bibliographic references is not the year that they were published. Rather it is how germane they are to your topic in your review of the relevant literature. Of course you want the most inclusive and accurate readings that you can find. This typically means more recent references (for example, high school boys and girls now have roughly similar math backgrounds although this was not the case 25 years ago). Older bibliographic entries typically "set the stage" while the more recent entries bring us up to date. On the other hand, if you have a relatively new area, you won't have those older bibliographic readings. If the field has "moved on" (e.g., cognitive dissonance or filmed aggression) you may not find newer readings.
Citations typically follow American Psychological Association (APA) style: in the text, simply put the author's last name and the year the study was published (e.g., Jones, 2001). Give the full citation in a reference section at the back. If the author has more than one study in a specific year, designate them as 2001a, 2001b, etc. If an author has a common last name, add their first initial (e.g., M. Jones, 2001a).
PRIORITIZE
All concepts are not equally important, all theories not equally fruitful, all empirical studies not equally well executed or unambiguously informative. In selecting theories, concepts, and studies for your paper, emphasize those that are the most important and appropriate for your topic.
Examine theories and concepts for internal contradictions, ease of operationalization potential, and the available supporting evidence. Consider whether the studies you select for review could have multiple interpretations of the results or are too limited to be conclusive.
BIGGER
IS NOT NECESSARILY BETTER
A shorter paper is often better, if it is well-organized, succinct, and avoids redundancy. Repetition is the most common problem that I see in novice papers, and it can be eliminated if you reorganize. Fortunately, word processors make it easy to block and press the delete key, move sections around and make substitutions.
HELP!
I'M NOT DONE YET!
Several individuals, especially those who are either gathering or analyzing data, won't have their total paper done by the draft date. That's expected. Turn in what you can, and focus on the writing and conceptual review. Please DON'T turn in a mass of disorganized pages, of course, but showing where the results will go and a tentative description and explanation of the results is fine.
HELP!
I'M DOING A LITERATURE REVIEW AND FINDING A MASS OF CONTRADICTIONS
This is actually a pretty typical experience. To help you through the maze, here are some suggestions:
Consider methodology first: Are the populations comparable in the different articles and papers you examined? Findings derived from college student samples (truncated ages, socio-economic class, academic ability) may not generalize to other groups. This is a question of external validity.
More methodology: are the verbal and other measures used comparable? If not, this may cause discrepant results across studies.
More methodology: were control variables used in the analysis? Were the SAME control variables used in the analysis? Bivariate results may change when other independent variables are controlled.
Check out the age of the publication. Gender differences in math once found in high school students have narrowed dramatically. More recent generations are more sophisticated about science inquiry than earlier generations. The phenomenon you are interested in may have changed over time (that's an interesting finding, so be sure to include if that's what happened).
Got TOO MUCH literature? In view of what we know, your topic may be too broad. Narrow the scope of your review.
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Susan Carol Losh August
14 2009
