Psy 325:
Stereotyping & Prejudice

Kathy Oleson

Reed College

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Term Paper

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Research Project, Report and Presentation

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Term Paper

You are asked to select a topic for your paper, review the literature that is relevant to that topic, and then present a specific research proposal building on that previous research. Your paper will roughly follow the format of an empirical research paper, except that you will propose methods and results rather than actually preparing and running a study.

Each component of the project is outlined in detail below.

Written Statement of Paper Topic

Due Friday, September 29th

Your first task will be to select a topic for your paper. It is obviously an important and potentially difficult task to select a topic that relates to the themes of the course, that is of scientific interest, and that can be managed within the scope of the time available. I encourage you to take the time to focus on something that truly interests you. Feel free to come talk to me about possible paper topics. Your written statement of your topic should be a brief paragraph describing the general area that you would like to research and, ideally, the more specific types of questions you hope to pursue.

Annotated Bibliography and Research Question

Due Monday, October 23rd

Drawing on methods some of you have learned in Jennifer’s course, you are asked to create an annotated bibliography. Your annotated bibliography should include a list of 8-10 articles in APA format as well as your thoughts and notes about each article. At the top of your annotated bibliography, please provide a sentence or two describing your focused research question, which should be very specific by this point.

APA Formatting. For each of your entries, include the full reference formatted according to the rules of APA style. The APA website on formatting can be found at http://www.apastyle.org/previoustips.html.

Annotations. First and foremost, each annotation should include a brief summary and explanation of how the source is relevant to your research question. You may also want to include the following: questions left unanswered by the study, alternative explanations for the findings, relationships between the findings and those of other studies, or methodological limitations. Each entry will probably be one to two paragraphs long.

The more time you devote to making your annotated bibliography thoughtful and complete, the easier it will be to write the introduction of your paper. Please make sure that your summaries and comments are written in your own language so that you can use the phrases from your annotations in your actual paper. This is a situation in which it is very easy to commit unintentional plagiarism, so please be careful. If you choose to use any direct phrases from an article in your comments, be sure to use quotations. For instance, given that I drew many of the above paragraphs and the tips below from Jennifer Corpus’ description of Annotations from her syllabus, I should place the quoted paragraph and tips in quotation marks & cite Corpus.

A few tips:

  • You will likely need to consult, skim, or read about 20-30 articles in order to find 8-10 appropriate articles along a single theme that will contribute meaningfully to your paper.

  • As a general rule, you should have read every article you cite in your annotated bibliography. (Providing a thoughtful annotation is obviously quite difficult without reading the article!)

  • Some of the references you will seek will be available only if ordered through inter-library loan (ILL), which can take several weeks to arrive. Therefore, I encourage you to get started on your literature search as soon as possible.

  • If you find yourself in the undesirable situation that an ILL source has not yet arrived by the due date of the annotated bibliography, you may still list the source in your bibliography, but you must indicate that you have only read the abstract of the article.

  • I have samples of effective annotated bibliographies from previous students that I am happy to share with you. As with all assignments, please feel free to come talk with me at any point about your idea and/or finding appropriate references.

First Version of Your Paper

Due Wednesday, November 15th

See descriptions below for the elements of the paper.

Peer Editing of Two Peers’ Papers

Due Monday, November 27th

See descriptions here for ways to peer edit others’ papers.

Final Version of Your Paper

Due Monday, December 11th by 5 pm

With your final paper, turn in your peer comments from your two peer editors & your earlier comments from me.

Term Paper Format

The format of your term paper should be as follows.

Abstract

Goal is to provide a brief overview of your paper. It includes your research question, your methods, results, and implications. It is typically 100 – 200 words long.

Introduction

Goal of intro is to provide justification and background information about why this research should be conducted.

  • Briefly explain the question that your research is addressing.

  • Review previous research relevant to your question. Thoughtfully analyze the methods, findings, and interpretations of previous studies in a way that makes a persuasive argument for why the study you are proposing is important.

  • Provide a general overview of the method you will use to address your question.

  • State your hypotheses, along with the conceptual rationale for each.

  • State briefly what your proposed research is designed to add to previous research.

Method

Goal is to convey what you would do in your study in enough detail that someone else could replicate it.

  • Describe the sample of participants - e.g., age, sex, race, social class, # of participants and how you will recruit participants.

  • Describe your experimental design.

  • Describe procedures in detail. How would you run the study? What measures would you use?

  • If you propose to use any questionnaires or measures from previous research, cite the source and describe the measure: item content and format, instructions to participants, and evidence for reliability and validity. If you construct your own measure for your term paper, present the measure either in the text or in an appendix.

  • In your method, discuss precautions that you would use to control for any biases, e.g., would the experimenter know which conditions the participants were in, would you randomly assign people to conditions?

Results

Goal is to clearly & concisely explain what you expect to find.

  • Summarize what you expect to find -- you could use tables, graphs, etc, if that is helpful. Present the results in a way the clearly conveys the expected results. These are hypothetical findings.

  • Be clear but concise in explaining the expected results.

Discussion

Goal is to provide an interpretation of your results, suggesting limitations to your research, and proposing future research directions.

  • Summarize your expected findings.

  • Discuss the theoretical and applied implications of your findings.

  • Discuss how your findings fit with previous research.

  • Discuss possible limitations of your study.

  • Make suggestions for future research.

Your paper should be 12 -15 pages in length & should follow APA conventions. For some helpful hints about using APA style, see: http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/apa4b.htm