UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL
Department of Psychology
Spring 2000

47.345  Psychology of Health and Adjustment

Guidelines for Paper   (Due Monday, April 3)

Each student must submit a paper, 10-12 pages of text in length (12 point font, double spacing, 1” margins).  The focus of the paper will be a critical analysis of current thinking in psychology about some specific aspect of health and adjustment.  Students must obtain the instructor’s approval of their paper topic in advance.

In choosing a topic for your paper, you should first think of which aspect of health or adjustment you are most interested in, and whether you are more interested in issues of causation and risk factors or issues of treatment and prevention.  Then you should review the coverage in our own texts to have an overview of current scientific thinking in psychology.  What are some of the possible causes and risk factors that have been investigated?  What are some of the theories that have been proposed?  What are some of the different treatment methods that have been tried?  What are some of the current controversies and debates?  Then you might want to do some additional reading (books, journal articles, Internet pages) until you have narrowed your focus to a very specific question that you will attempt to answer in your paper.

For example:
· Is hostility really a risk factor for coronary heart disease?
· Can a daily exercise program help people to recover from depression?
· Is meditation an effective stress-management technique?
· Do sex education programs in high school help to prevent sexually transmitted diseases?
· Can dieting do more harm than good?

Your paper will be based on references that you are able to locate, using books or book chapters, articles from professional and scientific periodicals, and appropriate Internet sites.  Among your references (of which there should be a total of 10 to 15), you will be required to locate two different research studies published in scientific journals which investigate some aspect of the nature and possible causes of the disorder, or how it might be treated.  Except under unusual circumstances, popular magazines, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and course textbooks should not be used as references.

The paper itself should be organized as follows:

1. Introduction (usually only a page or so): Begin with a brief discussion of the area of health or adjustment you will be looking at.  Maybe include a few statistics, some descriptive information or definitions, a brief summary of what psychologists are currently asking or thinking.  Then clearly state exactly what you intend to do in the pages that follow – the question you are asking, possible answers you will discuss, perhaps even the answer you intend to argue for.

2. Review of Literature (the main body of the paper): Present what you have learned from the reference materials you have located.   Discuss in some detail the various opinions, arguments, research findings, and theories that deal with possible answers to your question and that provide support for possible answers.  Remember that at least two of your sources must be research studies published in scientific journals.

3. Analysis: Now that you have presented information from your sources, you need to analyze it, objectively and critically.  How sound are the arguments?  How logical and consistent are the opinions?  How much supporting evidence is there from research studies?  How solid is this evidence?  What are the possible counter-arguments?

4. Conclusion: Flowing directly from your analysis, you should now be ready to end with your conclusion.  Do you think there is a clear answer to your question?  Are there many possible answers?  Do we need more research?  If so, of what sort?  What does all this mean, and why is it important?  Why should anybody care?

Include a Title Page with your name, the name and number of this course, and date of submission.  The title itself should be between 5 and 15 words long and should clearly indicate the precise focus of your paper.   Also include a References page, with full bibliographical information for all references cited (direct quotes as well as paraphrases) in your paper.  The Title and References pages are not counted as part of the text pages.  Number all pages, beginning with the first text page.

NOTES ABOUT CITING SOURCES:

General Principle: Correctly citing sources in the text of a paper is very important for at least two reasons.  First, citing sources lets your instructor appreciate the amount of work you have done to locate and use good sources.

Second, it is a matter of academic honesty.  Every time you make reference to an idea, opinion, fact, theory, argument, research study, finding, etc., that you have found in some source, you must clearly indicate that source to show that it is the work of another.  This applies not just to direct quotes; every single time you are drawing from, or paraphrasing, one of your sources, you must cite it as your reference.  To present the material without citing the source is dishonest because it suggests that the material is your own.  Such dishonesty constitutes what is known as “plagiarism,” one of the most serious of academic offenses, and one which can lead to charges being brought against a student and/or a failing grade for this paper.

Rules for Citing Sources APA Style(look at your texts to see how it is done):

1. What to cite: A reference is cited by giving the last name of the author(s) or organization and the year of publication.  The name(s) and year should correspond exactly to the listing on the References list at the end of the paper.  When using a direct quote, use quotation marks, and also include the page number(s) where the quote appeared in the source.

2. When to cite: The citation should occur as soon in the sentence or paragraph as possible, to immediately draw the attention of your reader to the fact that you are drawing material from an outside source.  If you continue over the course of several sentences or even several paragraphs to draw from the same source, it is not necessary to continue to cite it.  The general rule is that whenever your reader may not be sure of the source of your information, you should cite the source.

3. Where to cite: Right in the text of the paper.  Do not use footnotes or endnotes.  References should be cited as part of the natural flow of text.  Do not just stick a citation at the end of a paragraph.  At the end of your paper, include a References page that lists all works cited in the paper (and only those), arranged alphabetically by first author’s last name, then with year of publication, title of book or article or Internet page, book publisher information or name, volume and page of article or URL for Internet site.

NOTE: You can only cite as a reference the book or article that you yourself read.  If that book or article contains a reference to some other work, you may not cite that other work as a reference.  Thus, if you are reading a book by Smith (1996), and Smith describes a study by Jones (1992), and you want to also mention Jones’s study, your reference is Smith.  You could say, “In a 1992 study by Jones (Smith, 1996)…;” or, “According to Smith (1996), Jones conducted a study…..;” but you cannot simply cite Jones.  In similar fashion, your References page at the end of your paper will list only the actual works that you located and used.

Remember, only a first draft of the paper is due Monday, April 3.  Papers will be graded and returned to students within one week.  Students will then have the option to revise their papers and resubmit them, and the deadline for resubmitted papers is the last day of classes, May 10. 
 

Copyright ©1998 Beverly J. Volicer and Steven F. Tello, UMass Lowell.  You may freely edit these pages for use in a non-profit, educational setting.  Please include this copyright notice on all pages.