Instructions
In an effort to get you started thinking about your paper (due the last day of class), Lab 1 is designed to introduce you to the ways in which researchers search for psychological research.
For this lab, you will use PsycInfo and Google Scholar to search for keywords and phrases of interest to you. These keywords and phrases will identify articles that may be relevant to the topic you are interested in studying further. In order to determine what you are interested in examining, and thus what your hypothesis will be, you will need to do some background research.
- In a paragraph or two, describe your topic of interest for the research paper, and why this topic is relevant for psychological research (i.e., why this topic is important). Although you may have a personal story or anecdote for why you feel this topic is important, remember to think and write like a scientist (objectively, skeptically, tentatively)!
- Find 3 scientific references that are relevant to your topic and that you will read to help learn about research in this area. Briefly summarize each of the references (in your own words). In your summaries, be sure to use proper APA style for in-text citations. Cite journal articles or chapters from edited volumes that will be helpful in either building your literature review of the topic, or designing your proposed study.
- In addition to citing references in text, include a list of references (again in APA style).
Note: Select articles that are related to your hypothesis, not the first three articles that show up in your search (unless they are indeed relevant to your topic). If you select articles from the first page of your search and they are not relevant, points will be deducted. This will require a bit of search and digging through the literature.
