Journal Article Custom Essay

If you are enrolled in PSY 105 or PSY 106 and do not wish to participate in research to fulfill the Intro Psych Research Participation Requirement, or if you are unable to participate in enough experiments, you

will have the option of writing short summary papers instead. Each paper is worth one credit hour. You may do any combination of experiments and papers to complete your requirements. To write a summary

paper, you will need to find an appropriate journal article.

Journal Article Requirements

• The article must be from a scientific journal, such as the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General or Psychological Science (just to mention two – there are many others). It can not be from a

newspaper or magazine, such as Psychology Today or Time. The two journals Psychological Reports and Perceptual and Motor Skills are also not acceptable sources, although empirical research reports

from most other journals are fine. Scientific American articles are acceptable, but only if they are about research that is related to psychology.

• The article must be about research in or related to psychology. In other words, it must report the results of an empirical study, or summarize the findings from several studies. It must have data.

• The article must be from a current journal issue. This means that the publication date must be from the current calendar year. If, for example, today’s date is Jan. 30, 2010, you must use an article

published in 2010.

Paper Requirements

Please keep in mind that you will not receive credit for a paper that does not meet the requirements outlined below. To help you a checklist and an example paper are provided below as a guide.

• Citations: All papers must include APA-style citations. If you are unsure of what this entails, the details are listed below, and there are numerous resources available online and within the

Psychology department to assist you.
• No plagiarism, including recycling of papers, cutting and pasting of text, or verbatim use of phrases from the article. The optional papers are a class assignment, subject to the same rules

of academic integrity as any other course work. Plagiarism, turning in the same paper twice or for two different classes, or other violations of academic integrity will be reported to your instructor and the

university.
• No direct quotations of more than three words. Everything must be put into your own words.
• Paper Content – see the checklist below for details, and the attached Example Paper for a template.

APA-style citation

Last name of Author, Initials. (Date of Publication). Title of Article. Title of Journal , Volume, Page Numbers, and URL if retrieved from the web.

SUMMARY AND COMMENT (1-2 Pages; 12-point font; double-spaced; 1-inch margins)

Purpose of Study
What were the authors studying and why? What did they expect to find (i.e., what were the hypotheses?)?

Methodology
Review the basic methods. How did they measure what they were studying? What type of population (abused kids, adults with a disease, college students, rats, etc.) were they studying?

Results & Discussion
What did the researcher(s) find? Did the results support or fail to support the authors’ hypotheses? What is the meaning of the results?

Reflection
What are your personal thoughts about this study? Does the study relate to your personal life, anything that you have learned in your studies or anything that you have read in the media? Is there anything

missing? What questions does this study raise in your mind? If you have other reflections, feel free to include those, as well.