PSYC 515
Research Project: Final Paper Assignment Instructions
Overview
This final paper is to demonstrate your culmination of knowledge from this course. In practicing the standard format and writing style of research scientists, this activity should help you become a more efficient and informed consumer and producer of research. By incorporating feedback from your peers and instructor, you are honing scientific writing and research presentation skills highly valued within our profession and in the larger scientific community. Thus, this activity should help strengthen your skills as both a consumer and producer of research in psychology, as a scientist, and in nonprofessional settings.
Instructions
Now that you’ve created most components of a research paper, you need to compile them into a single word document to submit as your Final Paper. You will need to make all of the changes recommended by your instructor on earlier versions. You must also add depth of thought and an expansion to your Introduction and/or Discussion sections. This can include additional details from current citations but will also require you to incorporate additional references (see expectations below).
There is no minimum page length as long as all components of the paper are sufficiently addressed. Redundancies should be avoided. Being concise, however, does not mean a lack of information – rather, that every word serves a purpose. Given the simplicity of this design, the lack of a thorough background, the body of the manuscript (i.e. excluding the title page, abstract, references, or appendix), a well written, succinct yet thorough paper for this class should be between 6-8 pages.
No quotes are permitted in this assignment. Paraphrase and cite appropriately. All components of this assignment should follow the formatting guidelines of the APA Manual and follow the directives for a Professional Paper. This is a cumulative assignment. Your writing should not only be grammatically correct but must also demonstrate a graduate level understanding and application of concepts and terms related to research methods and statistics.
· This Final Paper should have a minimum of ten (10) unique references (eight of which must be quantitative articles published in peer-reviewed journals) discussed within the Introduction and Discussion sections in a meaningful manner.
· You will also need to add a Title Page, Abstract, and key terms.
· You will have at least one Table and one Figure directly related to your hypothesis– these should be included within the Results section.
· Your Reference section should be complete based on citations used within the entire paper.
· A copy of your survey must be included as an Appendix.
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.
