Topic Self esteem
TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE A RESEARCH PAPER IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Format:
· APA style includes the following:
· Title page
· Abstract
· Body
· Introduction: what is the topic you are writing about, and why does it matter to research it?
· Body: review relevant literature
· Conclusion: summarize what you learned about your topic of interest throughout your research.
· Reference page
Paper Concept:
· You are basically doing a literature review on a topic from your Social Psychology class.
· You are expected to identify some key scholarly papers and review them in the paper.
· When reviewing a paper, briefly describe the paper’s purpose, methodology, results, and conclusion.
· You should articulate how the papers you reviewed relate to your topic of interest.
· Remember, you are researching a topic that interests you, so you should learn something from your research.
· This is not a history paper or a social studies paper. This is a Social Psychology Research Paper.
Topic:
· Choose any topic at all from Social Psychology
· Do not be too broad that you have too much to review or too narrow that you have nothing to review
· You can synthesize different topics if you like, but in the short amount of pages, I recommend sticking to one specific topic.
References:
· “Scholarly references” means
peer-reviewed journal articles
· A textbook is not a source itself as it is a review of other sources
· Wikipedia is not a scholarly source
· Magazine (including online) articles are not scholarly articles
· I recommend using the PsychInfo Database to locate your sources (or GoogleScholar)
· Tips:
· Find the topic in the textbook that interests you and locate the source
· Find other sources from the introduction of a source you like
· In PsychInfo, you can find articles that have cited a specific article; so if you like an article, look to see other articles that have cited it. They may also interest you
Other Tips:
· Do not simply click on ‘cite in APA’ in PsychInfo and copy and paste the reference. There are two reference errors that are made when doing that: they capitalize the first letter of every word in the article title, which you are not supposed to do, and they include the section number of the volume number of the source, which you are not supposed to do. DO NOT make these errors. Refer to the most updated APA manual for all specifics.
· DO NOT OVERQUOTE!!! Try your best not to use any quotations at all, but if you must, use no more than one. It is very jarring for the reader to keep switching writing styles, and it doesn’t demonstrate how well you know the material. Put EVERYTHING in your own words – even if you think it sounds better the way the authors wrote it, trust me it is not.
