Term Paper Assignment: Exploration of a Professional Journal Article in Psychology 

Please compose an outline of the term paper assignment described below. Your outline must be at least 2 pages long and you must answer all questions asked in the assignment as described below. 

The outline is a brief summary of your term paper. You may submit it anytime (at least ten days before the term paper is due) to get feedback. It is not graded, and it will not be included in your term paper grade. It is just an opportunity for you to get feedback on you topic before you finalize your term paper. You will receive an email from me if you are off topic and need to make changes before your final submission.

Term Paper Assignment: Exploration of a Professional Journal Article in Psychology

 

In the Palm Beach State/Florida Atlantic University Online Library, go to online academic database.

Please use the following link  http://libguides.fau.edu/pbsc to access academic journals.

Find a recent research article from a scholarly journal in the field of developmental psychology. It must have been published less than 12 years ago.  Be sure to select an article for which the full-text is available.  Actual journals for which full-text is available include Advances in Cognitive Psychology, British Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Positive Psychology, Issues in Forensic Psychology, Journal of Psychology, among many others.

Note: Do not use newspaper or magazine articles or Websites such as Wikipedia to complete this assignment. Visit Palm Beach State University’s guidelines against plagiarism.

Your selected article must meet all of the stated criteria or your assignment will not be accepted.  Before proceeding, please ensure that your selected article meets the following criteria:

• Full-text is available in online database
• Is a scholarly journal article in the field of psychology
• Was published less than 12 years ago.

Get a sense of what the article is about by reading some key sections.  Begin by reading the Abstract of the article.  Subsequently, read the Introduction and the discussion sections.  Flip through the paper and look at any figures or tables.  Read as much of the paper as practical; get as much out of it as you can.

Write a paper of at least 2000 (five pages) words in which you:

1.  Identify your selected article, using a proper APA-style reference. See examples at the end of this assignment.

2.  Describe what type of article it is and how you can tell. For example, is it a primarily a review of existing research, a report of new research, or an analysis of a professional issue?  Describe how you can you tell.  If it is a research article, identify the type of research involved.

1. Summarize what you have learned about the content of the article.  Be sure to include the main purpose of the article, the major findings, and how the major findings are supported.
2. Explain how this article fits into the overall field of developmental psychology.  Then, identify the corresponding chapter(s) from your textbook.
3. Explain why this article is different and similar from articles in non-scholarly periodicals, such as magazines and newspapers. 

How to properly cite your article

Author list (Year of publication) Title of article.  Name of Journal, Volume number, page numbers.

Examples

Houston, D. M., McKee, K. J., Wilson, J.  (2000).  Attributional style, efficacy, and the enhancement of well-being among housebound older people. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 22, 309-317.

Iudicello, J. E., Woods, S. P., Scott, J. C., Cherner, M., Heaton, R. K., Atkinson, J. H., Grant, I.  (2010)  Longer term improvement in neurocognitive functioning and affective distress among methamphetamine users who achieve stable abstinence.  Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 32, 708-718.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements: 

• At least five pages long (2000 words).
• Be typed, double-spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required assignment page length.