Reference no: EM131454065

Term ResearchPaper : Forensic Psychology

For yourterm paper, you will be responsible for reviewing some of the relevant literature on a topic from this class. Specifically, you will be asked to decide on a topic that you would like to know more about, and then you will be asked to find at leastfour peer-reviewed articles from psychology journals that discuss empirical research studies.

You will be asked to review the basic methods and results of those studies, and use them to draw some conclusion about the topic.

Getting started and finding articles

• To get started on the paper, your first job is to pick a topic. Look back at the lectures and readings we've covered so far. Skim ahead in the remaining chapters as well. Look at the table of contents, or flip around in the index. Look at the "Hot Topic" boxes through the different chapters. See if anything jumps out at you. If it doesn't, come see me and we can do some brainstorming together.

• Use the PsycInfo database (on Bryant's Library/Articles & Databaseswebpage) to find your articles. In your PsycInfosearch, please check the box labeled "Peer Reviewed" to make sure you stick with appropriate articles from appropriate sources. Ask for help from a librarian or from me if you have trouble with your literature search.

• As you pick articles to review, start by reading the abstracts, which give you a summary. Use the abstract to make sure that the article reports on an experiment or other kind of empirical study, and provides specific data. That's the kind of article you're looking for. Review papers, theory papers, and opinion papers that don't include actual data won't meet this requirement.

• You are welcome to augment your paper with additional sources, including some taken from the law instead of psychology. But these should be additions, not replacements for the four required peer-reviewed empirical psychology articles
Reading and interpreting the articles

• Reading journal articles takes some practice. I recommend starting with the abstract so you know what to expect. Then read the introduction, so you know what it's about and why the study was run. You might then want to skip ahead to the discussion so you get an idea of what they found. That will give you some context when you go back to the methods and results sections and try to pull out relevant information about the study.

• As you try to extract the relevant information from the methods, remember that your main goal is to figure out what the researchers did. You're trying to find out what was manipulated and/or measured in this study.

If it was a survey or questionnaire, you want to find out what kinds of questions were asked. If it was an experiment, you want to find out what the participants experienced and what they were asked to do. If the study included a mock jury, you want to find out the key elements of the trial they worked with and the key characteristics of the jury itself. If this is a study of archival data, you want to find out what data sources they used.

It is okay to skim certain sections(e.g., the Participants section), and focus most of your attention on the sections that describe the procedures and measures they used.

• In the results section, try not to get too hung up on all of the numbers and equations. It's okay to read right through those as if they're not there. You're looking for written explanations of what was found. Statements like "Group A didwere more likely to do x than Group B," or "Variable A was positively correlated with Variable B."

Writing the paper

• Your paper should be structured as an argument. In other words, you're developing a thesis, and trying to convince the reader that it's supported by evidence.. Your first paragraph should lay out the topic. Define the issue and give it a little context.

Explain a bit about why it's important. (e.g., "False confessions are a problem for the legal system because...").Raise some question that you're going to try to answer in the rest of the paper(e.g., "An important question is why anyone would offer a confession for a crime they didn't commit.") and offer some hints about the conclusions you will be drawing to help answer that question (e.g., "Research shows that false confessions can occur as a result of interrogation techniques because...").

• The body of your paper should lay out the evidence for your argument by reviewing the studies you found. There are multiple ways to structure a paper, but here are a few possibilities.

a. A simple way to structure this is to write a couple of paragraphsabout each study. You might devote one whole paragraph to explaining why the researchers ran the study (i.e., what hypothesis were they testing and why did they think this study would answer it? This kind of information can usually be found in the introduction of their paper). Then you might go on to devote a paragraph to the specifics of the study (their methods and results). You might then give a paragraph about why you think the results did or did not make sense, or why you think this supports the overall argument of your paper.

b. A more sophisticated way to structure it would be to organize it more thematically, drawing in your references as you encounter points that they can support. (e.g., "A number of studies have demonstrated that...For example so-and-so found...however blahblah found that..."). You should still aim to give some basic information about methods and results and not rest with generalizations, but you would have to weave them carefully into your paper to support your specific points.

• After reviewing all of the studies, draw some conclusions. What should we believe, now that we've seen this evidence? Why does this evidence lead to this conclusion? As you wrap up the paper, you might choose to make some final statement reiterating the importance of the topic and the conclusion.

• General tip: Make sure the paper is always focused on the evidence. Don't offer unsupported opinions or assumptions. Don't include personal narratives. Avoid unnecessary references to yourself. Don't offer biographical information about the authors of your articles (their institutional affiliations and even their first names are irrelevant. Just use APA style citations.). Just focus on the evidence.

Specific Requirements

This paper should be approximately 5 to7 pages in length, double spaced, with standard margins, and 12 point font. Use APA style for references (ask me if you don't know how!). APA structure for the paper itself is not required (i.e., you don't need Methods, Results, or Discussion section because you are not presenting new data). You also don't need an abstract. You do need an APA style reference page.

This paper will be graded based on the cohesiveness and coherence of your argument, the appropriateness of the articles you choose, and the clarity with which you describe them.Grammar counts too, so please proofread!

The paper should be submitted to blackboard. You don't need a paper copy.
Any questions? See me, call me, or email me, sooner rather than later!